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Author Topic: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 561830 times)

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2500 on: June 15, 2018, 01:09:03 AM »
What's interesting is that reading the reviews I expected you to go the other way.
Interesting that this reaction applies to pixote's reviews as well.

I think that’s partly because I lost steam in the verdict and didn’t feel like beating up on the losing film, which I ultimately didn’t quite like (C+). Like Teproc, I didn’t struggle with this decision at all.

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Teproc

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2501 on: June 15, 2018, 03:45:16 AM »
Yay ! I of course thought of Vive l'Amour during the final shot of CMBYN (in fact I suspect I might not have been as enamored with it as most because it's kind of small potatoes when compared to that), but I didn't remember the fruit shenanigans, that's a funny connection. I'm guessing it's a coincidence, but who knows I guess ? A quick Google search doesn't yield any Guadagnino mention of Tsai though.
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roujin

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2502 on: June 15, 2018, 08:44:01 AM »
Woo!

Teproc

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2503 on: October 09, 2018, 11:45:21 AM »


Hai shang hua / Flowers of Shanghai
(Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1998)
Round 1 review by roujin
Round 2 review by worm@work
Round 3 review by Jared
Round 4 review by PeacefulAnarchy

               VS               


Lat sau san taam / Hard Boiled
(John Woo, 1992)
Round 1 review by manana
Round 2 review by michael x
Round 3 review by BlueVoid
Round 4 review by smirnoff
Round 4 resurrection by pixote




Flowers of Shanghai




An exploration of the world of concubines in 19th century Shanghai, Flowers of Shanghai certainly feels of a piece with the previous Hou film I've seen in this bracket – The Puppetmaster, even though they have very little to do with each other thematically (I think). In both cases, Hou shows you vignettes composed of mostly static interior shots (somewhat reminiscent of Ozu to me but I wonder if this is just a facile comparison of arthouse Asian directors or if there is an actual link here) : in The Puppetmaster he used those to explore a man's life through episodes, playing with the passing of time with ellipses. Here, it feels more like a sociological study of an environment, going from one concubine to another, with storylines that sometimes intertwine, but not always.

I say « static » but that's not quite accurate, as Hou frequently moves the camera from one part of the room to another, which reinforces that feeling of the viewer as an observer, and I suppose one might say a voyeur though I don't think that's what Hou is going for, given the lack of nudity despite the subject matter.

It's all rather interesting and I enjoyed both the performances and the style on an intellectual level, but I had some trouble engaging emotionally with it. In some ways I'm more impressed with Hou's direction here than in The Puppetmaster, but I care a lot less about the characters. The only two performers that got me to perk up a bit were Tony Leung at times (he's great at quiet, internal suffering isn't he ?) and particularly Carina Lau as Pearl, the most cynical and manipulative of the concubines. I suppose I get bored of longing at one point and part of me wishes there was more actual scheming involved. I'm not sure. I don't usually mind a film having no plot, but I suppose this didn't quite click for me beyond a purely intellectual level. That certainly counts for something though, and I am at least glad that these Hou films do have singular aspects to them, makes me want to see the rest of them more.

Hard Boiled




This film is insane. I knew going in about there being a massive setpiece set at a hospital, but I didn't expect it there to be two big action scenes before that which would qualify as the climax for the vast majority of action films. This being Woo of course, it's a good thing that there is so much action (we get to the hospital with one hour left in the film!) because the writing is pretty consistently awful, and Woo's style is completely all over the place. Even in action scenes, he often loses sight of what his film is doing, but it gets really problematic in non-action scenes.

I was pretty worried early on that I was going to hate this, because I've seen The Killer and I couldn't stand Chow Yun-Fat in it, nor did I have much stomach for the cookie cutter morality of Woo's script. This is much better on both fronts : I'm still not in love with Chow as a performer, as he mugs at the camera way too oftne for my taste, but it seems that most of his antics disappear as the film progresses. Maybe it's sharing the screen with Tony Leung, who does more of his trademark internal suffering here, in a performance that I would say is just fine for him, which still means it's pretty strong. When they joined together in the hospital, I found myself actively rooting for them rather than passively enjoying the spectacle, which I haven't found in Woo's other films I've seen (which is to say The Killers and MI:II, so not that much).

This doesn't mean I loved the film, far from it. Its treatment of its only female character, who seems to be Chow's superior but nonetheless takes orders from him throughout the film and is literally relegated to taking care of babies while the action is going on... It's certainly not as bad as it could have been for a 80/90s action film I imagine, but still.

Then there's the utterly senseless violence. I initially thought the film had rather fascistic undertones, with Chow being the tough man a society needs to protect itself, principles be damned... but as the film went along, it seemed to me that the apocalyptic feeling of it all, and the way in which cops and criminals were completely undistinguishable – between the undercover cops, the criminals dressed like cops and the fact that they both constantly shot each other (and civilians) before asking questions... when the final setpiece turned out to be all about saving a baby, it kinda clicked for me. Babies are innocent, and may just be our shot to be out of this disastrous mess of a society. That might be giving Woo too much credit, but I can see it, and it does help make the violence serve some purpose beyond entertainement.

Verdict: Yet another mixed review for Hard Boiled, and yet another victory nonetheless. I liked Flowers of Shanghai, but I'll take the mess with moments of greatness over the interesting but not incredibly engaging thought piece most of the time.
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smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2504 on: October 30, 2018, 01:32:45 AM »

Audition
(Takashi Miike, 1999)
Round 1 review by Bill Thompson
Round 2 review by Blue Void
Round 3 review by Beavermoose
Round 4 review by Teproc
Resurrection by pixote

               VS               

Happy Together
(Wong Kar-Wai, 1997)
Round 1 review by Clovis8
Round 2 review by Bondo
Resurrection by pixote
Round 3 review by BlueVoid
Round 4 review by ProperCharlie






Audition


I'm really curious to see how Audition does from here on. Good write up Bill.

I'm pretty sure it will be knocked out rather easily, depending on who gets it of course. I don't envision it as something the majority of FS land would get behind.

And here we are 4 rounds later. :)

I can see why. As uneven as the film can be, it does achieve greatness now and then. Even if it's only for a moment or two, the fact that it gets there at all puts it ahead of many films I've seen for the bracket. One such great scene is the first time we see the mysterious sack move. You'll have been suspicious of that sack from frame one, and yet when it finally jumps to life it startles you anyways. It's a rarer type of jump scare... the kind that gets you even as your staring right at it (not unlike the refrigerator roaring to life in Requiem for a Dream).

How immoral is it to hold an audition for a fake roll, for the purposes of meeting someone you want to date? It's pretty god damn scummy isn't it. Are there mitigating factors? Not really. The fact his wife died, he's lonely, his kid is encouraging him to meet someone, and his work colleague is the one pushing this audition scheme, don't change the fact it's ultimately his choice and it's wrong. Barring that decision he seems like an okay guy. The director portrays the scheme as being innocent hi-jinks... but given what happens later I suspect he feels it is anything BUT innocent. The fact he chooses to present it that way for the audience though begs the question: Does he believe the audience will go along with it? By giving it a rom-com tone, does he believe the audiences morals are so fluid they will view the clearly scummy act as something quite lighthearted? The titular audition, when it finally takes place, matches the tone of a montage in which a bride-to-be tries on many silly wedding dresses. Very very light.

It's a choice I question because I'm wondering if the director is taking a dim view of his audience. Perhaps he was right to do so. 1999 is a long time ago after all. Maybe he sensed people would look at this scheme and not see anything all that wrong about it. Many rom-coms are morally dubious if you take a too-serious look at them, so maybe he had aspirations to be a wolf in sheeps clothing. But if his theory was that he would catch anyone's ethical navigator asleep at the wheel, the movie poster pretty seriously undercuts that possibility (it features a woman holding a syringe).

Dramatically I don't think anything is gained by taking the film to such a tonal extreme, only to have it swing completely the other way.... not if that sea change is telegraphed the way it is in this film. I dunno... it's standard thriller formula I guess.

Giving Asami a origin story, as horrible as it is, just makes her less scary

This. It's so true. Plus those are the most boring and cheap looking scenes. Why are they there? I suspect director is once again trying to play with the scales. More mitigating factors that are ultimately meaningless once you get to the third act.

Things get less interesting as the thriller takes full hold, occasionally in cartoonish fashion, and with a muddled mix of dream, memory, and fantasy.

Very muddled. I don't like how this story was edited together. I think they overthought it. Too many flashbacks and dreams, and inserted at weird times. None good.

Ultimately though, because of the nature of the story you'll be hard pressed to forget it. And because it manages to have a few great scenes and many forgettable ones, it's likely to be looked back on fondly. I saw it 3 or 4 weeks ago at the time I write this, and I have become more positive on it in that time than I was immediately after it ended. I wish the angle or twist had been "who's auditioning who"? But there's nothing I saw that indicates she was particularly fussy about her targets. I also wish the film had tread a finer line where the ethical questions were concerned, and made it harder to see in black and white terms.



Happy Together


The reviews up to this point have been very well written, and very thorough. I can't think of anything new to say about the film, and I can't say better what's been said so well already. So I'll just get right to my ultimate feeling about the film: meh.

bullet point reasons:
-unlikable characters
-not a compelling story
-slow
-feels like we're in the same room for 90% of the film
-Even Wong Kar Wai cannot make these dingey, hollow-walled locations feel sexy

Recommendation: Watch My Blueberry Nights for the pinnacle of WKW sexiness.



Verdict: Audition is more memorable and more interesting to think about so it gets my vote. Also, if it comes to pass that I have to watch one of these two films again, I very much don't want it to be Happy Together. I will need needles in my eyes to stay awake!
« Last Edit: October 30, 2018, 11:35:59 AM by smirnoff »

Teproc

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2505 on: October 31, 2018, 02:22:56 AM »
Hey I get a quote !  :D

I generally agree with you on Audition, and I do wonder about how the film was marketed when it came out, with it really seeming like a slightly weirder romcom for the first half.

Aside from My Blueberry Nights, are you generally not into WKW, smirnoff ?
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smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2506 on: October 31, 2018, 12:34:52 PM »
Hey I get a quote !  :D

I generally agree with you on Audition, and I do wonder about how the film was marketed when it came out, with it really seeming like a slightly weirder romcom for the first half.

Aside from My Blueberry Nights, are you generally not into WKW, smirnoff ?

Chungking Express and In The Mood For Love, while more visually and musically sustaining than Happy Together, were still not my cup of tea. The characters all feel quite stagnant in those films to me.

I've never seen any of his actiony films (Grandmaster, Ashes...)

oldkid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2507 on: October 31, 2018, 06:01:41 PM »
I really enjoyed the Audition pendulum and while the audition seemed a bit creepy, the character didn't seem very insightful... kinda dumb really.  Post-Weinstein, I don't know how anyone can see this but horrible.

I totally agreed with you on Happy Together.  I was so miserable in commiseration with the characters that I didn't bother watching the second half.
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pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2508 on: November 13, 2018, 02:26:21 AM »
Round Five Matchup



The Hole  (Tsai Ming-liang, 1998)
Won over The Last Dance (verdict by worm@work)
Won over Stage Door (verdict by BlueVoid)
Won over Ermo (verdict by Jared)
Won over Kamikaze Taxi (verdict by mañana)
Won over The Road Home (verdict by Beavermoose)

I don't really know how to talk about how moist The Hole is without opening up all sorts of Quoting out of Context possibilities, but that moistness is truly one of the movie's most defining characteristics. Tsai's film is a wet towel tasked with soaking up the puddle created by an unceasing leak. It's also an alienating film about alienation. If you watched How I Met Your Mother, you're no doubt familiar with Barney's more successful theatrical adaptation (which I humbly suspect is the most ingenious comparison ever made in a review of this film). The Hole should be screened annually on April Fool's Day as part of a nineties Arthouse Ponce double feature with Todd Haynes' Safe. Intermission would include a musical number, and everyone would sniff glue.





The Road Home  (Zhang Yimou, 1999)
Won over 6ixtynin9 (verdict by smirnoff)
Won over Butterfly Lovers (verdict by jdc)
Won over Supermarket Woman (verdict by Verite)
Won over Sopyonje (verdict by Jared)
Lost to The Hole (verdict by Beavermoose)

It's so fitting that The Road Home ends with a freeze frame, because it's exactly that kind of film. You've seen saccharine, overly sentimental, tv movies before, right? The kind with scripts dependent on pedestrian voiceover narration and editing reliant on ill-advised slow motion and ubiquitous dissolves? Yeah, so you know exactly what I mean. The Arthouse Ponce Theatre could pair it with The Straight Story as part of a tribute to the effortful burials in the innocuous nineties. It's the rare film that would have been improved by commercial breaks, especially if they were highly jingled ads for frumpy winter coats at the Chinese version of Old Navy ("as worn by Zhang Ziyi in the film!"). Once again, How I Met Your Mother colors my viewing, this time with the Dobler-Dahmer Theory. The love-at-first-sight romance at the heart of The Road Home is, for me, the tale of a relentless, crazed stalker who won't rest until her beloved's soul is trapped in his grave.



Verdict: I haven't been able to watch many films lately, so perhaps I'm expecting even more from the few I'm able to watch than usual, but this was obviously a hugely disappointing matchup for me. Having just had a very good experience with Tsai's Vive L'Amour, I couldn't wait to watch another of his films ... a feeling which lasted maybe ten minutes into The Hole. I was, to be fair, in a highly negative mood that day and disappointed with the DVD presentation (having been able to enjoy Vive L'Amour in HD), but give my a Blu-Ray release and a generous dose of Paxil and I'm not sure my take would be any different. I'm jealous of the experience everyone else had with the film in this bracket (and retroactively mad at worm@work for using the same screenshot), but I just can't relate. It all sounds much better on paper than it did while watching — an experience more akin to having moist salt rubbed in my psychic wounds.

The Road Home was a rewatch for me, and my disappointment in The Hole was great enough that a second viewing seemed superfluous. I confidently remembered the film as a toothless but well photographed movie with a shining debut performance from Zhang Ziyi. But rewatch it I did and ... yikes. It is in fact pretty well photographed — but the editing is so atrocious as to undercut much of the photographic beauty (which itself is far from perfect). The photography is better in isolation, like in the screenshots in smirnoff's verdict. There is one shot of Zhang disappearing into a blizzard that would maybe make the shortlist of best shots in the bracket — but it suffers from its middling context. And Zhang Ziyi's role doesn't really give her much to do besides run awkwardly through nice scenery with a desperate smile on her face, none of which rises to the level of impressive. The same character seen in old age is much more interesting, and I rather wish the story had played out completely in the present, without the long, central flashback. I had the "toothless" part right, but the other billion films I've watched for this bracket make that label seem rather generous here. There should have been twice as many shot of characters working looms, cooking dumplings, and repairing broken dishes.

I'm not excited to see either of these films advance, but the more interesting failure (The Hole) is moving on to the sweet sixteen.

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smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2509 on: November 13, 2018, 04:02:19 AM »
I trust your opinion today more than I trust my own from nine years ago. :)) Crumby matchup but I ain't mad at the decision.

Quote
The Arthouse Ponce Theatre could pair it with The Straight Story as part of a tribute to the effortful burials in the innocuous nineties

:))

 

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