Some Films Wot I Saw
As part of my drive to “do more stuff”, Gill and I have signed up for membership of The Showroom. Since having kids, we’ve been to the cinema far too little, so now that we have Anne living with us, offering babysitting whenever we want, we’re taking full advantage. And as membership means that we get to see new films, on the day of their release, for only £2, we’ll always be first with the new releases, rather than watching them when everyone else in the world has already seen them, as seems to have been the case previously.
Partly as a result of this, I’ve seen three films in the last week.
Lost in Translation is everything they say it is, and more. A beautiful, wonderful, near-perfect film, everyone should see it at least once. One thing I haven’t seen mentioned in various reviews is the incredible sound-design (well, I guess Sofia’s dad did make Apocalypse Now, which kind of put movie sound on the map). The drunken/party scenes captured perfectly the sights and sounds of a slightly confused hedonistic night out, especially by the time they reached the karaoke bar, where the slightly-off vocals leapt out of the screen at you. I only noticed two pieces of music superimposed on the soundtrack (although according to this there were plenty more), and neither could have been more apt. “Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine filled my head with the kind of fuzz that my head would already be filled with on a 4am drunken cab ride home through neon lights, and “Just Like Honey” by The Jesus & Mary Chain (who I never used to be that keen on, but on the basis of this I think I need to re-evaluate; lend us your albums, Niina) was uplifting closure-providing “drive back to the airport” music. The whole film, airport-taxi-ride to airport-taxi-ride, was a perfect (how many times can I use that word in one post?) whole, which accidentally conjured up bizarre juxtapositions with the airport-departures to airport-departures mish-mash of Love Actually.
The Last Samurai is everything they say it is, and less. As Muriel Gray says here: “It just has a ludicrous concept at its centre. We’re asked to imagine that the Samurai were not in fact a bunch of arrogant, bloodthirsty, mysogynist, fuedal, murdering bastards with peasant mentalities, but instead a noble breed of
automatons who placed honour above all else. The film ironically then goes on to demonstrate just how utterly mindless ‘honour’ without cause is, but without realising that’s what it’s doing. It becomes unintentionally hilarious with men topping themselves, and everyone else in sight, left right and centre, just becuase they can.” I would add that, unlike Muriel, I found the cinematography to be distinctly average, perhaps because I’d just been spoiled by Lost in Translation. I also wasn’t at all convinced by Tom Cruise’s acting, he just looked like Tom Cruise trying very hard, although I guess that’s something plenty of people will pay to see. In the film’s defence, I did sleep through half of it (bloody over-warm cinemas; I saw this one in the Fulham UGC, not at the showroom) so I may have missed something good. And in my own defence, I was extremely wary of seeing it, I only went because Mark wanted to and Hannah wouldn’t go with him. I hoped it might at least contain a bit of exciting action, but even that was a bit too cod to be much fun.
A Mighty Wind is very funny, an affectionate and occasionally moving look at how peoples’ own personal obsessions can seem a little, erm, bizarre to everyone not in the know. Unlike Peter Bradshaw, I laughed a lot. Although not as much as the woman a few rows behind us, nor anything like as loud. Neither did I parrot any of the words which I found particularly funny. Oddly enough, these interruptions didn’t spoil the movie for me, if anything they perhaps made it funny. As the film demonstrated so well, it takes all sorts.
Next week, we hope to see American Splendour. And I’m signing up for the Showroom’s Film Studies course - got a term of Hungarian movies and then a term of Jim Jarmusch. Can’t wait.