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Film top twenty-one

by CSLi on April 4, 2009

CComing up with a Top Ten movie list is impossible. Bah! Here’s the best I can do — movie titles link to a scene clip, review or trailer.
HAVE A GOOD RECOMMENDATION FOR ME? Tell me what I’m missing — Always looking for a good flick!

1. La Graine et le mulet (Secret of the Grain): The winner! Following a community of Tunisian immigrants in Sète, a French port city on the Mediterranean coast. The boundaries of love, sacrifice and family are explored in this beautiful film.

2. shortbus: Close 2nd for this gorgeous, honest movie about Better Living through Sex. Prepare for all types of bodies to be demystified. One of the most humane, forgiving storylines I’ve seen…and fun!

3. Babel/Before the Rain The link between these two movies is structural (as the reviewer states), but tonal as well. I love both of ‘em. Try to watch “Rain” first, if possible? It’s the grandfather of the two in its scope and narration.

4. Dancer in the Dark: (see clip above) Between my two von Trier picks (the other is “Breaking the Waves“), this one inches ahead due to Björk’s incandescent portrayal of a Czech immigrant living in 1960’s America. This heartrending tale is delivered as a musical featuring the most oddly exquisite soundtrack ever.

5. Oasis: A social misfit and a young woman with cerebral palsy form a friendship in the face of their abusive families. Hailed by many as the turning point of the Korean New Wave cinema.

6. Freeway: Wacky, subversive, trashy and smart. Love this movie! You’ve never seen Reese Witherspoon like this! The girl can ACT! (when she’s not trying to be a sweetheart…)

7. Ben X: Belgian film about a teen with Asperger’s Syndrome who tries to navigate his harsh reality through an MMORPG avatar, “Ben X”. Powerful and sad.

8. Lilja 4-ever: This 2002 film by Lucas Moodysson is set in Estonia, then Sweden. Based loosely on the story of Dangoule Rasalaite, a Lithuanian girl who jumped off a bridge in Malmö in 2002, Lilja 4-Ever depicts the trafficking and forced sexual slavery of a sixteen-year-old girl. Tough to watch, but important.

9. Marat/Sade: A “play within a play” depicting a fictional conversation between the French revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat, and the Marquis de Sade. Based on a 1963 play by Peter Weiss and performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, this is one of my all-time favorites.

10. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance: This third installment of Park Chan-Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy is its most delicate. Fellas might prefer Oldboy, which is just as deft, but as an adoptee I will always think of “kind-hearted Geum-Ja” as my birth mother. If only! With characteristic violence, plot layers and music like a tapestry, Lady Vengeance delivers Park’s final blow.

11. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? I saw this when I was 20, and it put me off marriage for a decade. Liz Taylor and Richard Burton are classic, but Sandy Dennis just makes me giddy.

12. Tian mi mi (Comrades, Almost a Love Story): Yes, another sappy love story…almost. This is one of HK’s best movies, fairly sweeping all the trophies at the 1996 Hong Kong Film Awards. Starring the amazing Maggie Cheung.

13. 28 Days Later: Zombie flick re-packaged as social critique. Love it! (NOTE: avoid the sequel “28 Weeks Later”, it’s terrible.)

14. Vicki, Christina Barcelona: Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall are all involved in a love quadrangle. Fortunately, it’s far more entertaining than that sounds. Cruz steals the show!

15. Paris, Texas: Moving at its own pace, like a dream. A haunting portrayal of the trappings of life, and of love.

16. Moulin Rouge: A simple, idealistic fairytale about the love between an aspiring young writer and a hooker with a heart of gold, set in Fin de siècle Paris. An Australian movie with lots of great music!

17. Amores Perros: a friend once told me that this title means “Love’s a Bitch,” and not “Dogs of Love”. Is there a difference?

18. Heavenly Creatures: A phantasmagorical tale, based on a shocking, true story. This film adeptly handles the intensity of female friendship, proto-lesbian attachment and murder in a charming, “night-before-christmas-ish” way.

19.Battle Royale: The premise is preposterous, but I love these armageddon-esque movies! BR has a huge cult following who adore the gore and sensationalism; these are definitely present, but if you look carefully, you’ll find a touching, poetic and insightful coming-of-age tale…with a Japanese twist.

20. Jackie Brown: This opening scene of Jackie on the airport walkway always gets me. Narrative pacing at its best! Go on Jackie, get yours.

21. Maze: Rob Morrow plays a NYC sculptor with Tourette’s. He falls for his best friend’s girl, played by Laura Linney. This is a sweet “period piece” that has New York 90’s all over it.

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EN-RA-HA: from narcissism to schizophrenia in an Axle car

by CSLi on December 1, 2008

from the steps of the Sacré-Cœur, Paris
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from the steps of the Sacré-Cœur, Paris

from the steps of the Sacré-Cœur, Paris

HHaving seen the deceptively simple movie “Happy-Go-Lucky”, in which a thirty-year-old Londoner’s effervescence makes you feel giddy (or shitty, as you please), you might be struck by any one of its gems: the realistic depiction of adult female friendship (a gift of the director, Mike Leigh), the delicate portrayal of indefatigable courage bordering on stupidity, or perhaps the simple telling of a story in which women are not tangential. These things are thin in the air of a movie theater, or they exist in so-called “chick flicks” (pet-peeve term alert!) which do not garner much attention.

As for me, I can’t stop thinking about the characterisation of Scott, an eccentric driving instructor with bad teeth who teaches Poppy, the protagonist, how to drive. (I have been to London; driving in that city is No Joke.) If, like some people, you are annoyed by Poppy’s buoyant attitude, Scott is your spokesman –until you realise that things are not quite “okay” in the “head” of this quirky fellow. Reportedly, Leigh studied the jargon of driving instructors, phrases like “peep and creep” and “if there’s a van, there’s a man”…these useful aphorisms take on an eerie mantra-like effect when intoned by Scott, who adds the flourish “EN-RA-HA” to remind Poppy about the “ever-seeing eye” at the top of the windshield. It’s hilarious and sad.

How does the ego, that deeply-lodged menace inside each of us, present for one man a small matter of keeping the lawn cut, and for another the slippery-slope descent into crazyland? My connection to mental illness is very personal: bipolar disorder, manic depression, paranoid schizophrenia and schizoid personality disorder have afflicted various people in my life… but there is a story that haunts me the most.

She was strong, tall, of Teutonic stock, shorn hair, long lashes. Her thick voice said to me, “den Himmel so Fern” when I asked what she was doing in Thailand. Though I had no German then, I understood. In the way that we glorify our lovers and overlook the presaging signs of weakness in them (a peculiar odor, a facial tick), I did not pay attention to her rants against the Catholic Church. Who doesn’t have a mild grudge against the Catholic Church? To hear her voice, the sensual sound that emanated from her throat and intermixed w’s with v’s, comfortable with consonants and very long words, I fell under her spell. “The number for the Catholic Church is six-six-six,” she would say, “and the number for Satan is five-five-five. The number for mankind is seven-seven-seven. If you look at all religious texts, the total sum of their pages is…” and so on. I didn’t hear the words, so transfixed by her was I, so helpless at the sound of her voice! Had I any sense then, or any sense of mercy, things might have turned out differently.

But what’s a girl to do? We were in love. We wanted to have cats together. Three years later, she accused me of selling transcripts of our phone calls to the German Deutsche Welle airwaves. Because, Schatz, I can see in the faces of people on the street, they are knowing my private business. How much have they paid you?

I pleaded with her to seek help, I tried reasoning. I tried coercion. I even appealed to her superstitions and “saw signs” that she should get help. These attempts only made me suspect. We broke off contact and for years I wondered about my beautiful friend. Did she ever find her heaven? Was it so far away?

To this day, I get the heebies whenever someone starts to talk about the intrinsic meaning behind numbers, or the sneaky presence of Satan vibrating within certain colors. I’ve all I can do to keep the zombies at bay…so please, Scott, keep your EN-RA-HA to yourself.

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