Munich is complicated. Honestly, I came on a recommendation for the cinematography. But the portrayal of PTSD with that final sex scene was a jaw-breaker, god.
Spielberg lets you spectate a fellow human being slowly graduate to complete moral bankruptcy, leaving you with this sinking awful feeling of shame
A great slow movie about a guy coming back to his hometown and reflecting on what’s changed. I feel like most of the mainland China films I’ve seen are all very similar in pacing. Which is nice, I enjoy slow movies. I think this movie would make a great diptych with Taipei Story since they both have a guy coming back to a changed place.
This also continues the same theme I talked about in my Eva 3.0+1.0 log of not being able to change who you are, which I see a lot in East Asian movies. Maybe I should keep a tally of when I see it.
Much more drama focused compared to Itami’s previous 2 films. I found the style more subtle and was more so found in the editing. Its a little disappointing since I did go in with the expectation that things were going to be similar to The Funeral or Tampopo, but that expectation was entirely manufactured by me so I really shouldn’t.
what a damn treat of a movie
i liked the random people doing reenactment stuff a lot.
i simultaneously hated and loved it
mmm brad dourif
Knowing the prestige of Katsuhiro Otomo this was a little disappointing. The premise of a yakuza man getting mad at tenants that don’t understand him is good and funny, but I don’t feel like it was worked through very well. He mostly does the same stuff, just waiting on the tenants to react. I think it would’ve worked better for him to try weirder things, and the tenants still not giving a shit. I found it kinda slow to a fault, I felt like nothing was happening for half the movie and I didn’t really feel like the movie was taking advantage of that well enough. The ending was cute though.
p good
Lots of really annoying Hollywood-isms. Random quips that come out of no where, adding nothing. The first ~20 minutes could’ve easily been cut, its entirely exposition and is all reexplained later. There will be these brief 1-second flashbacks to something that was already shown in the movie, which I find pretty insulting. I didn’t fall asleep you don’t need to add a blinking red sign to say THIS IS THE PART WHERE THIS THING PAYS OFF.
Before watching this I would’ve answered yes to the question “Do you consider yourself a movie guy?”. But after watching and thinking a bit I don’t think I would. If I were to have watched every theatrically screened movie ever, I would most definitely dislike more movies than like. I’d think a ‘movie guy’ would end up liking significantly more than me. My definition has changed from “a movie guy is a person who likes movies” to “a movie guy is a person who likes movies for the sake of them being movies”. I think a lot of the ‘great’ American directors that talk about how much they “want to create a great film experience” are just making movies for the sake of being movies. I feel like that’s soulless. I want to watch a movie made for the sake of being art.
christopher nolan’s illustrative film-making is lovely, however much it seems to fly right over my head. Oppenheimer is a man of strong will, and the seemingly-modern way the characters talk was tantalizing to my brain.. If it was not 3 hours I would rewatch it to understand more, but sometimes the surface is enough.
it’s good
Normally when I watch a movie that is similar to another I’m not all that bothered. Assuming it was by different filmmakers. When a director makes a movie, then basically makes the same movie again I feel sort of let down which is how I feel with Unlucky Monkey. Its very similar to Dangan Runner, although a little more refined in style, but also more basic. The other SABU movies I’ve seen all have lots of similarities, but they all do something different that doesn’t make me feel swindled.
Also one of the actors is literally Giancarlo Esposito but Japanese
In my log for Taipei Story I mentioned how the movie continues the theme I don’t see in a lot of Western media of homesickness for adolescence. Sure, there’s Western coming-of-age stories that end with a “After we all go to college will we still visit during summer?”, but there’s something more to it that I couldn’t really put my finger on with East Asian media. Now, after watching 5 more months of movies I think I have a better idea of it.
It isn’t really a homesickness for older times, I think its deeper than that. I get the feeling that the East Asian outlook on things is that after awhile you get sort of /stuck/ at some point, and you can’t really change as a person, almost to a painful degree. That point is usually somewhere at the end of adolescence. When you’re a kid you get to do whatever, trying to experience all that life has to offer before you become a boring adult with a job, with a personality that reflects what you experienced as a kid.
Different East Asian media explore this very differently, too. Taipei Story was about people reconnecting, realizing they’re different people now. In the Heat of the Sun was about kids being as carefree as they could, to their detriment. Tampopo was a bit different, having a man who messed something up once and didn’t believe he could try it again. Gundam, Ideon, and Dougram (and MANY other mecha shows, I’m sure) all have kids have their innocence stolen from them by war.
Evangelion however, takes a different approach. Yes, you may believe that you can’t change who you are and you may be happy with it, but you CAN change. It’s painful, and you may end up destroying the majority of the world’s population, but you CAN do it. Evangelion has a more ‘complete’ picture of this pain, but that doesn’t mean its approach is better or anything, it’s simply a different approach.
Evangelion of course isn’t the only story that I’ve seen use this approach. Ping Pong the Animation is also very similar, for example. While I’m writing this I’ve just thought of the only piece of Western media that I think gets close to what I’ve been talking about: season 1 of True Detective. I’m not sure to what degree though, I’d have to rewatch it.
After I’ve experience certain media, I get a sort of pause after watching it. Very few things I’ve read or watched do this, but Evangelion is one of them. The only thing that I experience that is similar is when I’ve been hanging out with friends for a long time, then the day after I’ll feel a similar pause. The only way I think I can describe it is a certain melancholy, its very reflective. I’m not really evaluating the movie at all during this pause, and I’m not even really evaluating myself or the movies affect on me. I’m just letting the movie sit with me in a way that’s more profound than other movies normally would.
I have other thoughts more specific to the movie itself, but I don’t feel its right to write about it. I feel like it wouldn’t work well with the previous paragraph.
good
good
With Shark Skin Man, the characters were up front from the beginning about being themselves. But with this movie things take a bit longer, and the characters have to keep interacting with each other to reveal more of their… ahem… character. I feel like I keep comparing Katsuhito Ishii’s stuff to Shark Skin Man a little too much, but I think its fine considering how much of his stuff I’ve seen and how stylistically written it was. Despite that difference Party 7 still manages to have Ishii’s character writing I’m finding myself enamored with.
The opening animation hit me like a freight train, making me baffled by what was going to happen for the next 90 minutes. Despite taking place in basically two (2) rooms, I still think the movie delivered on what the opening showed. I enjoyed the weird comedy and people getting angry at each other for the smallest things, and I thought the ending was cute.
The first time I watched this was in my freshmen year of college. Stuck with a roommate I hated, movies were one of my few respites. On Fridays he would go out drinking and other frat bs, which meant I had a pretty consistent quiet ~5 hours to myself every week. I didn’t really know what to expect other than stop-motion animation so I was awestruck by the beautifully disgusting world unfolding before me.
When I went to watch this again, I was in a very bad point emotionally feeling like I didn’t have I place to call home. I didn’t want to watch something comforting or normal, it would feel patronizing. I knew I felt like shit, and was only going to feel like shit for the foreseeable future, so the only thing that felt appropriate was something grotesque. Instead of continuing to feel like shit, watching MAD GOD comforted me and I felt better. Looking back to when I first watched this, I remember feeling a similar sense of comfort, but I probably didn’t realize it since I was also happy to not have to listen to my roommate. I still don’t know why this movie is comforting, it isn’t exactly cathartic, it’s different from that. I might never know, and I’m ok with that.