237 minute running time, that’s right, THREE HOURS AND 57 MINUTES, so it’s a real slog … 1960s Taiwan, I guess there were a lot of street gangs and juvenile delinquency and this kid from a respectable family falls into it … even for someone who has an interest in Chinese history like me, most of this movie was hard to sit through, just sort of boring until the shocking end. No idea why Criterion thinks it’s a “singular masterpiece.” This was a John Farr reco.
Don’t worry about me, Dad
82 minute running time, so a good length. Somehow I ran across Christopher Radcliffe in my online travels and learned that he’s half-Chinese, which interested me. Maybe he was a screenwriter of something else I recently watched… anyway this movie was both written and directed by him and a Columbia grad named Lauren Wolkstein … this was a low budget movie with amateur actors and the story was extremely depressing …
SPOILERS: apparently this teenage kid was being molested by both his father and his neighbor so the kid killed his father and burned down the house and ran off with the neighbor. The neighbor was this young beefcake guy, so it didn’t really work for me. A horror movie really. Not recommended and certainly not a John Farr reco.
You’re going to feel some pressure now
155 minute running time, that’s right TWO HOURS AND 35 MINUTES … not really a documentary about Sherman’s March but about the filmmaker’s screwed-up love life instead … towards the end of the film he says that everything in the south felt “crazy and off kilter,” and I thought that was putting it mildly. All the women in his life, from his sister to the many women he pursued, were all lunatics, just stark-raving mad. McElwee is a smart guy and parts of the movie are hilarious, but the overall vibe is sort of weird and depressing. Lots of examples of terrible 80’s eyeglasses and haircuts, for historical reference. This was a John Farr reco: “… an inspired meditation on life, love and relationships.”
Nightmares of the apocalypse
Check out this car for sale:
The beautiful and talented Jennah Bell with John Forbid, I dig it… love the dance routine too.
In French. 105 minute running time … I like Jacques Audiard … he made A Prophet, which I loved, and Dheepan, which I also really liked … but I wasn’t super thrilled with this. I guess the 13th District of Paris is filled with public housing maybe? So you have a lot of immigrants in one spot … it features a Chinese girl, a black guy, and a French white woman … the last is a sex cam worker / law student / real estate agent … the black guy is a teacher and the Chinese girl works in a call center and later a Chinese restaurant .. it’s about how their lives intersect, esp. their sex lives, and how things work out or don’t. Sort of a Millennial movie. I wouldn’t recommend it but John Farr did.
Post-right-swipe coitus joy
In Hungarian. 95 minute running time. Beautiful Hungarian woman, a neurosurgeon in New Jersey goes back to Hungary to chase a guy she met at a conference, but he claims not to recognize her, is she losing her mind? … bit of a weird one, and I wasn’t super thrilled… it was a movie made by a woman for women, maybe? It’s not bad, it’s just not recommended, though John Farr liked it.
Documentary. 79 minute running time. Made by someone named Lisa Hurwitz who somehow tapped into the Jewish network and got Mel Brooks and Ruth Bader Ginsburg involved … interesting story, the rise and fall of a restaurant business… was Mr. Horn a homosexual? It would explain the great style of the Automats with the white marble-topped tables … good, fresh food from a central commissary, a neat model … the death of the inner city via suburbanization meant the death of the Automat, but there was a glorious era for them. I enjoyed it. This was a John Farr reco.
In Bosnian. 101 minute running time… movie about the war in Yugoslavia and how incompetent and ineffective the “UN Peacekeepers” were there … a real indictment … I didn’t realize there were mass murders of Bosnian Muslim men and boys in cold blood by Bosnian Serbs … awful stuff and only 25 years ago or so … the ending is a real kick in the teeth as you see Aida still lives among the men who committed atrocities (no spoilers) as the years go by … it reminded me of how in China the people who persecuted the intellectuals and others during the Cultural Revolution still live side by side with their victims to this day … depressing. This was a John Farr reco.
Put them on the list
112 minute running time and I surely could have cut out 12 minutes to tighten it up … this was a horror movie, just very hard to watch … the backstory of a mass shooting in Tasmania in 1996 … the mentally ill man (three years younger than me), his screwed-up parents, the Mikado-loving heiress who took him in … it’s all just awful to watch… the movie is well-made, but it’s just a horrible, horrible story. This was a John Farr reco and a major downer.
Laughing at my pain.
