Darick's Talk

Barry Lyndon

Kubrick makes this seemingly boring period piece drama about the rise and fall of edmund barry, into a single one (well,actually 2 part) spectacular never boring epic movie.if only he cast a much more stronger lead role(not ryan o'neill,whom i'll always pictured as a spoiled brat from love story),this could be perfect

Genre

Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters)

sure,it is not the scariest horror movie i've ever seen,but it's definitely one of the most beautiful,with ironic ending thats feels very shakespearean

The Visitor

This is one of those movies that makes you feel warm inside. After all the news you see on TV where people hate and kill "the other", this reminds you that there are people who loves one another no matter what their ethnics, religions and colors are.

Writer and director Thomas McCarthy and oscar nominated Richard Jenkins' fine acting deserve all the credits. All the supporting actors are great, too. Use of music, both in the movie, and in the story as the object to unite two different people is wonderful.

We should not forget that we are all visitors in this world.

Our Blushing Brides

"our blushing brides" is a great depression version of 60s "how to marry a millionaire", featuring joan crawford_ the burgeoning supernova of mgm, her "shop girl to princessly socialite" stage. it's a story about three single dames who strive their ways to endure the great depression and their weary annoyance with the days of alarm clocks. inland girls who flew to great metropolitans dream of marrying loaded gentlemen of wealth to get rid of the drab life of tough bucks, unlike 60s comedy with marilyn manroe and lauren bacall, "our blushing brides" is a bleak melodrama of moralitistic doctrine of female virtues, easy girls who trade themselves off would have their retributions of even leaner days coming back to them, and the one dame who truly sticks to herself gets everything in the end.

three friends who share the same apartment work separately in the department store as salesladies in perfume and blanket branches as well as cat-walk model who demonstrate clothes to rich women, addled with the desperation of fading and rotting in a hopless life without glamour. one girl(crawford) stays true to her principles without hooking on the upper-class gentleman who has a crush on her while the other two sink into the quick access by men's favors: one marries herself off to a man who seems to be a bit too careless with money; the other consents to be the mistress of a rich man whom she thinks she's gonna be married to...but eventually the naive dames who fancy easy success without giving much are punished. joan crawford is the one who earns the genuine love of robert montgomery by refusing his firvolous request of one-night fun in his reclused cabin as well as her headstrong repulsion against his vivacious lovemakings. just like grandma always says, gentleman would only marry nice girl who ain't easy.

"our blushing brides" is great depression cinderella tale without gayety and humour like monroe's classic "how to marry a millionaire"..more realistic to a degree except its firm insistance of frigid feminine purity while its leading lady is a sexually emancipated woman by private with an aggressive drive. i suppose life ain't like movies. in a nutshell, "our blushing brides" is a highly watchable melodrama about women's mindset during great depression, and you shall see designer adrian being able to pull off the wardrobe even the subject matter is on shop girls without dough.

The Hurt Locker

unbelievable tension. filmed documentary style with no political stance and a trio of outstanding performances. not only the best film about our current conflict in iraq so far, just an all around great war movie. adrenaline junkies only

interesting that the us army would have nothing to do with this project and practically sponsored michael bay's piece of crap transformers film

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Can that guy from "How I met your mother" carry a movie on his own? Yes, he can. He is no Seth Rogen but he shows some extra skin to get more attention. Since he also wrote this movie he must have said "I have an idea! I will show my dick! Once at the beginning and once at the end!"

As his dick witnessed very closely, our guy Peter is dumped by his girlfriend , some funny shit happens in between and another girl comes along to make him forget the other one. Not a corny rom-com, genuine and quite funny.

Eyes Wide Shut

i watch it in 1 o'clock in the night hoping to get asleep (because many people said this movie is boring),.but what actually happen is, i'm awake from the beginning till the end and didn't feel asleep at all.this movie is a thrilling and tempting erotic thriller that leaves me one question : is Kubrick really a human being?because you know,nobody's perfect,but it looks like there's no single flaw in his filmography !

Beat the Devil

Nice little commercial short by Tony Scott (my favoritte of the Scott brothers). Great cast and funny cameo by Marilyn Manson at the end.
The other Hire movies are pretty cool too. Clive Owen is the driver in all of them.

The Fountain

THE FOUNTAIN to me is a 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY for this millenium. It is visually stunning,and, makes me try to think the meaning of the film,by the end credit.Yes,it is a kind of movie that is gonna create a discussion after you watched it.many will hate it,but definitely,there are some that gonna love it,and i'm fall into the latter category.Pure Beauty...

The Big Town

"the big town" appears like a hommage to paul newman's 1961 "the hustler", an archetyped prodigal son tale people always enjoy to hear: a smug small-town boy with one special talent who hit big to the metropolitan city in his pursuit of fame and wealth, the essence of american dream, then he would bump into a lovely dame of maternal heart as well as the femme fatale who devours him alive with extreme sensuality. inevitably, he would sink into either booze or sex, or, both of them altogether. disillusioned, so he hits the road again to his home town with a broken heart. either he retracks to where he started or devastated by his presistant pursuit of dream. corny, right? but you just cannot quit it! whether it's the big-cocked dirk diggler in "boogie night", or billard master paul newman in "the hustler"...what counts is how the story is presented.

"the big town" is predicable in every scenario but it's rendered so elaborately that you accept it with adoration anyway, especially when the fresh-faced matt dillion, who was one of the promising supernovella who's got sex appeal, charisma and most of all, genius of his fluent naturalistic actings which resurrect the remants of james dean, marlon brando and paul newman in their days of rebellious outrage, and dillion had the edge to pull them off in pratically any material about troubled youth, such as his "rumble fish"...he simply looks so damned attractive with a cigarette burning in his mouth, throwing a dice recklessly as if he's gonna win, he's got "the cool" to swoon you.

it's a pleasant peep at the young, even more voluptuous diane lane as the femme fatale, and the sex scenes are surely a nice treat with elvis' "fever" in the background every time they mate. bruce dern as the obnoxious blind gambler boss and tommy lee jones as the tough-assed criminal, they're the villians alongside our prodigal charm-boy. every actor just fits into his/her part so seamlessly that makes this predictable story worth seeing. it's a compelling reminiscence of the hipster 50s with the best soundtrack of those songs which once hit the top notch of national sales. the process of viewing it is just one word to describe: smooth.

paul newman's hustler has received the ruminations of his tragic flaw: excessive ego as his fingers are smashed and his sweetheart commits suicide for humiliation that leads him into finding his true self, "hustler" is more of a think-piece to tell you the doctrine that everything you gain easy has a price to pay. but dillion's dice-thrower just slides across the path of easy dough in the poise without harsh retribution as you wish for him. so "the big town" is more of a crowd-pleasing feel-piece without grits in a well-groomed nostalgic aura so all you've got to do is to flow along with protagonist like a 109 mins of hashish fantasy.

Other Men's Women (The Steel Highway)

"other men's women" is one of those experimental pieces of works in the early sound movie stage. even it's directed by the maverick who created the legend of james cagney's "public enemy", william a wellman, but inevitably it's raw and primitive, in need of more polishing mellowness since cienma then still had its tiny span to adapt into the sound to emulate popcorn noises in theater. it also features fresh-looking enormously pretty mary astor with innocent wide eyes and lips of cheery blossom. most of all, it has young jimmy cagney before he hit big as the tough bootlegging gangster.

the flick is upon the absurd melodrama of threesome romance among the railroad coal-refilling workers whose code of buddy language is "have a little chew on me"(a sign of exchaning pop-gum), tiptoeing upon the freight train, leading a freewheeling proteriat lifestyle of hard-labour, booze and easy dame after work. somehow the sceneries do have a touch of americanistic realism which could compete with italian neo-realism despite its occasional backfires of overly deliberate melodrama. and the descriptive viewpoint is entirely male-centered, and mainly on the struggle of brotherhood and the illicit passion which is suppressed and un-fulfilled except a brief kiss without further developments. the rest of the story is relentlessly mushy about the manly principle of never crossing your pal's wife even you desire her to death...blah blah blah.

as the notorious grapefruit scene in "public enemy" suggests, director wellman may have an obvious reluctance to deal with women in his movies, when a guy's showed off by a dame, he doesn't know or not willing to cope with that but smash a bundle of grapefruit to her face then takes off since misogynism is primarily due to man's fright to confront the womanly menace. (ha)..there's rarely a place to deepen into a woman in "other men's women" since its two female roles are either disposable waitress(joan bondell) you swoon on monday and ditch by tuesday when you're lonely and miserable or the demure angelic wife (mary astor) who remains passive without actions, the object of desire, something you want greatly but could never have. then a whole long-winding story on brotherhood and the code of manhood.

but un-deniably, the fun of "other men's women" is its naturalistic shooting of proteriat lives within the inland states of america, just like a fragment of past coming into reality which you cannot resist appreciating and life was so simple when you could just climb upon the ladder of a freight train to do your own petite illegal drifting without costing a cent.

Merrily We Go to Hell

"marrily we go to hell" is a pre-code celebration of reckless brass toward hedonism as well as some possible suggestive content of marital promiscuity. sylvia sidney is still typecasted as the virtuous good girl who sticks to her beau even he may be a drunk wimp who cannot just make up his mind whom he truly loves, incurred with a very shakespearan issue "to be or not to be", absolute melodrama. besides that, you could take a peep at young gay cary grant who seductively tosses his champagne while leering the dame next to him.

so sidney is enormously rich but well-behaved nice dame who's got attracted to a handsome alcoholic who has a strange sort of quibing cuteness to charm the lady of silks into the slave of love. so she's determined to love him and wed him even he's abscent in their engagement party, forgot to bring along his matrimony ring in the ceremony and mostly he still possesses a self-contradictory crush to a broadway prima donna of blonde hair. gorgeous sidney of brunette hair still tolerates that since her beau always says "you're the swellest dame i've ever met" without any assured announcement of L. O. V. E. later she descends along with him while he's hanging over the blonde on the other hand, so merrily they go to hell in booze and decadence despite our swell dame still looks helplessly chaste in decay. would good sydney win the man she deliriously loves?

the best pleasure of pre-code movies is its indulgence of thorough melodrama without the moralistic hindrance for better light of doctrine. somehow sylvia sydney, whose mostly reputed work remained today is still hitchcock's "sabotage", shimmers in her adorable ingenune naivete whether it's pre-code or post-code, unlike norma sheer who conducts like man-hunting tramp before code but stingy mama after code. but i do harbor a private wish to see sylvia sydney act sluttish just like loretta young in pre-code "midnight mary" to gratify male audience's voyeuristic covet, but it ain't goody sydney. (lol.)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I saw its trailer in theatre, it didn't say it was Transformers first but some things started to blow up, the first scene I told my friend "This must be Michael Bay". Now you gotta give it to the man, he blows real good :) In Michael Bay movies, at some point, they must stop the film and show some "behind the scenes" because while people watching them they don't think "I wonder what's gonna happen next" they think more like "Damn, how the hell did they do that!?" So, instead of a final, a behind the scenes extra would be more suitable.

Now I say I'm "not interested" but I know I'll see it somehow, with some friends on DVD, I will of course vote for another movie but nobody will listen to me, they never do. But during the movie I will think of the song from "Team America". Here it is:

"I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark,
when he made Pearl Harbor,
I miss you more than that movie missed the point,
and that's an awful lot, girl,
and now, now you've gone away,
and all I'm trying to say,
is Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you.
I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school,
he was terrible in that film,
I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part,
he's way better than Ben Affleck,
and now, all I can think about is your smile,
and that shitty movie too,
Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you.
Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?
I guess Pearl Harbor sucked,
just a little bit more than I miss you."

:)

Satan Met a Lady

"satan met a lady" is a typical example of how you could ruin a ballistic novel by whimsically twisting it into a slapstick comedy. "satan met a lady" is based upon the well-reputed novel of danshiell hammett "maltese falcon" which had made a legend of humprey bogart as sam spade in early 40s. "satan met a lady" is destined to be forgotten (which i wouldn't call a doom) for its misguided adaption. there's no hard-boiled grit which is the essential attribute to "maltese falcon"...and the primary question would be: why bother to make it tough task by farcial attempt? is that a joke on hammet? sure, a forgotten joke.

names of the protagonists are all changed. william warren is the womanizing detective shane who toys around with dames, and bette davis is the femme fatale who doublecross shane for a precious "flute" instead of the phenomenal black bird. then the rest follows along the fixed storyline of maltese falcon. an obese rich dame and her also overweight tepid assassin united together against davis while shane observes with smirks. warren william does have an idiocyncratic sense of ridicule, a surviver from the silent movie days in transition to talkies, and he's tall, dashing and suave with a profile which could rival john barrymore. unfortunately, william's charisma is soon to be dated after the 30s. william is the ideal personification of leading man in pre-code hollywood, and he's the only one who could blend elegance with cynicism without vulgarities but a refined sort of decadence. every player in "satan met a lady" seems playfully abscent-minded to deliver their lines, laughing flirtatiously on the script dispatched to them. it's the least noirish movie made upon american detective novel ever, and even more frivilous than william powell's "thin man" which has been turned into a screwball comedy of success.

warren william's physiques do fit into sam spade by the novel but he's a reluctant sam spade who doesn't wish to be sam spade. he ain't so bitter like spade. how about davis? the only worthwhile moment she employs is her feministic assertation of asking a man to hold his hat high while being threatened with a gun because she's a LADY in presence. there's no female ferocity she expresses in "human bondage", no dubious sexuality but a girlish poise of mischief as she remakrs to william at the end "you would regret turning me in because you cannot find any other woman who is as smart as you"...so? is that a desire to be so obviously cute??

generally, the value of "satan met a lady" is its campiness, the campiest version of "maltese falcon" ever! no actor involved is really paying a heart to pull it off, and the whole set of cast is literily mocking themselves. and the treasure is a flute? so, you're gonna blow it off soundly, i suppose.

À l'intérieur (Inside)

perhaps personally i do possess a prejudice against shock-cinema which is to offend the tolerance of your senses continuously, and what's exactly the point to stir up your worst imaginations on various nightmares? do you need such perverse stimulus because you're too callously jaded? maybe it's the contradiction of human nature that you cannot resist the curiosity of the strange and the bizarre, and there's a voice inside you that drives into a peep at the deviant. but you bounce back just like your reaction against the over-heated stove. the procedure is nothing enjoyable but catalysis of vomit.

the story is about a woman's diabolical obssession of motherhood, so she haunts over an ill-fated pregnant woman by tracking into her house then brutally breaking into her room with a pair of scissors in attempt to cut the baby out to keep as her own. so the deeply endangered mother-to-be hides in the bathroom to defend herself...then the psychopathic wench shrewdly utilizes her fatal pair of scissors to slaughter any possible interference which includes the pregnant woman's parents...any potential cruel killing method is contained within this film such as stabbing a man's genital grudgingly...it's an extreme dosage of mental disturbance..surely there's no peaceful ending: the wench's got to sing her lullaby with the infant she freshly cut from a woman's belly while herself is deformed by a gas sprayer as she previously tries to light off a cigarette. in a nutshell, "inside" is a story of pure evil and absolute malice.

the massacre is deviced with every bit of "creavity" you could imagine as if the director remarks "let's think of every worst way of torturing someone in the most disgusting ways which would make you puke"...i've got to admit the french ways of killings are more "innovative " and scarier than american michael bay's recent "chainsaw texas massacre",,,i have no problem with cinematic violence as long as it's upon the dark side of humanity. yes, you might say such terrible massacre do happen in this world since serial killers do exist. but how about their minds? any profound motivation or character sketch?? yes, it has but very limited and meager. so the victim is a survivor of car accident and the killer is made barren also by a car accident..anything more?? it doesn't have any spare time for dialogues except fanatic continuous killings. very often it does sicken me to think of the raising popularity of shock cinema, whether it's french or american ones like saws or chain texas, audience doesn't have a heart anymore to probe the depths of characters but request of intense amount of irritant to defy your adrenaline. you wanna challenge your adrenalin, go parachute-diving which might teach you something of REAL SURVIVAL.

The Inner Life of Martin Frost

Paul Auster is one of my favoritte writers and it's great that he is also doing movies. But this film shows that some stories that work very well on paper just don't work on the screen. Watching the final scene of this movie, I thought to myself, if this was on paper I'd buy it but on screen it just looks ridiculous. In a few scenes he just shows the typewriter, I think he wants to tell "Ok, I thought this would make a good movie but now that I'm shooting it I see that it won't. But I can't quit! If I could just write on the screen.."

A writer (David Thwlis) goes to the his friends house in the country after finishing his last novel that took three years to write. He just wants to do nothing. But inspiration comes for a new story and he falls in love with his muse. It's a naive story and it's not that bad but when he writes for movies, I think he should stay away from the fantasy, because he is so good with words but he can't tell everything he thinks through the actors on the screen, so it's better if he writes more realistic stories for the movies, like he did in "Smoke"..

EDIT: Ok, I didn't know this movie was based on one of his books. Not the whole book, but it's the movie of a character in "The Book of Illusions". He tells the movie in full details in about 30 pages and it's pretty much the movie I saw and I was right, it works better on paper. In the book only a few people gets to see the movie, I'm sure Paul Auster didn't want it to be the fact for this one too but it did. I am gonna give an extra half star for the beauty of the book but the movie is still bad, sorry Pauly.

Kawaita hana (Pale Flower)

a stunning yakuza film with gorgeous black and white cinematography and an utterly nihilistic tone. hmm, flixster says '74 but i'm pretty sure it's '64, japanese 'new wave.' a gangster fresh out of prison meets a mysterious girl in a gambling den and they begin a relationship based on mutual thrill seeking behavior. it's not as bloody as most yakuza films; more character study than thriller, with a story involving the usual gambling, drugs and murder, but it's incredibly stylish, like melville gone to tokyo, with an existential edge. very cool avant-garde soundtrack too. this film is online at netflix in very good quality...

Hayat var (My Only Sunshine)

Reha Erdem keeps making exceptional movies in Turkish cinema. "Hayat Var" meaning "There is life" in Turkish, Hayat (Life) is also the name of the little girl that is the main character. The English name comes from the doll her father gives her that sings the song "You are my sunshine". Both titles are ironic, because the little girl's life sucks and there is no shineshine whatsoever.

Hayat has one of the most dysfunctional families ever on screen. Living in a barrack on the coast of bosphorus with her father and her bedridden grandfather. Her father does smuggling and pandering in his little fishing boat, her grandfather is in bed cursing all the time, her mother left and married a cop maybe because her husband had sex with men and his father was a sick fuck. You cannot grow up to be normal in this family and Hayat was not an exception. She doesn't talk much, she mumbles songs all the time, she spends time with the neigbour woman who is "too caring" and she gets free candy from the store where she gets molested.

The movie has one of the most interesting soundtracks that fits the movie perfectly. The director uses fine examples of arabesque music (a kind that always talks about pain and mostly popular in suburbs) and after one point the songs become the narrator. Bosphorus is one of the main characters in the movie and the director makes you really feel it not only visually but by the high sounds he uses skillfully.

This is a very depressing movie showing the ugly face of the corrupted society. It's not one of those movies that aims to make you cry, instead it makes you think and makes you realise what kind of a world you are living in, it makes you feel ashamed because you are sitting in the comfortable seats of a nice theatre knowing that there are actually this kind of lives out there.