La captive aka The Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000)

Strange one as one would expect from Mrs. Akerman. I find her experimental stuff from 70s infinite boring and pretentious and hardly watchable. But hell, that was 30+ years ago and it’s time to give her another chance right?

According to credits this one was inspired by Marcel Proust book but I’m pretty sure Marcel made it easier to follow. I’m not sure I got everything right, but will give it a try and summarize it. It’s about this rich and slightly confused guy Simon suffering from some kind of allergy (which is probably just metaphor for his impotence and/or jealousy) who keeps his girlfriend Ariane as a kind of captive in this big mansion. Since she’s also a bit weird we are not sure if he’s just obsessed with her or actually has reasons to be jealous or is just puzzled of her being a lesbian or what. But it has somehow happy ending, at least I think so…

This is typical arty stuff I usually loathe, but for some reason it’s strangely compelling and really watchable. Relationship between our two protagonists is so strange and tense that makes story unpredictable. It’s beautifully shot and staged and has few other odd characters and situations (the singing scene, wtf!?). There are also some new wave-ish funny dialogues and one-liners like “But what's two lies? Give me at least four. Then maybe I'll believe you.”

And of course it’s always nice to see Sylvie Testud, she’s great! Nice surprise was also Olivia Bonamy. Must admit I don’t recall her from other movies, but according to the IMDB she has been in few recent mainstream films and is far from being unknown.

7/10

Peur(s) du Noir aka Fear(s) of the Dark (Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuire, 2007)

I was a bit disappointed with this one to be honest. Most of the stories are pretty weird (which is of course good) but hard to follow. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t get it because I had fuckin’ toothache and couldn’t really concentrate as much as I should. 

Also wasn’t too impressed with animation techniques with an exception of story of that old aristocratic bastard chasing people with those wild dogs (yeah, fucker got what he deserved at the end!) It’s drawn really wildly with unsettling movements and weird shadings. And it matches story perfectly because it’s really scary and not creepy as the other ones.

Also worth mentioning are off screen narrated descriptions of what makes us fear the night with some weird animated shapes. Lots of them are pretentious arty crap you don’t even try to understand, but there are few cool and funny ones:

•  I'm afraid it would be hard for me to prove the superiority of Western civilization to an Afghan villager who's watching TV with me.
•  I'm afraid I would contempt all those who are different too easily. And because I don't accept myself as I am, that poses a problem. Because those who resemble me, depress me, and that gives me a negative image.
•  I'm afraid I won't be really useful just one time in my life. For example to make clear to a racist, to a single racist that it's cowardly, dumb and mean to be a racist.

5/10

Little Fish (Rowan Woods, 2005)

Below average drug addiction movie. One of the problems to start with is that we don’t really see any drugs. There is also couple of murders at the end which again we don’t see. Cate Blanchett has sex under the shower and – yes, you’ve guessed it – we don’t see her tits. And this shit goes on and on. Maybe this is because director was too busy with those annoying grainy shots where everything is out of focus? Or wanted so bad to make arty festival film since his entire opus seems to be some TV crap (according to IMDB)? He sure didn’t forget to include lots of ridiculous clichés.Like having fuzzy hand-held home video like shots of kids playing on the beach at the beginning and then again at the ending of the movie.

The only saving grace for this pretentious moralistic sleeper is Sam Neill. He doesn’t have lots of scenes, but he is a joy to watch. 

So if you want to see good stuff about addictions, go check again Clean or Requiem for a Dream. The only message you’ll get from this one is “Kids, don’t do drugs unless you want to live with your folks and work at video store when you are 32”.

3/10

Football Factory (Nick Love, 2004)

Tried and wanted to like it, but it’s really and honestly not very good. It’s just an unsuccessful mixture (mess?) of Trainspotting and Guy Ritchie movies and Fever Pitch and Shane Meadows and probably lots of other stuff. 

There are no “normal” characters here, everyone speaks in this fancy and “humorous” dialects full of “witty” lines, violence is graphic and excessive and there’s no end of “fock this, fock that”. 

Just got bored after 30 minutes or so.

3/10

Lat sau san taam aka Hard-Boiled (John Woo, 1992)

Saw this masterpiece for the first time on the big screen and was naturally blown away. My favorite Woo’s flicks used to be Killer, Better Tomorrow 2 and Hard-Boiled. But now I’m not too sure anymore – Hard Boiled is at least tied with Killer at the first spot. 

You see I kind of preferred to watch Chow Yun-Fat as cool kind of guy and not stereotypical (even more for HK that is) humorous and charming ladies man, but his portrayal of Tequila is just brilliant. I must see Killer again soon and decide about this tie.

10/10