Reviews

Dragon Hunters has to be the best-looking animated film I've ever seen. It was jaw-dropping. The film is about a couple rogues in search for some cash, their weird furry blue dog that pees fire, and a girl who dreams about becoming a knight, and they are sent on a quest to go to the ends of the earth to kill the world gobbler, an impossibly immense dragon. But honestly, it doesn't even matter what the film is about. Because, it is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The gravity in this fantasy world is different, so blocks of architecture and spheres of land float around amidst cathedrals and castles and villages alike, and there are forests of floating lily pads. The world is so creative, so uniquely beautiful, with a sort of muted storybook look to it. The world looks like a set of gorgeous paintings. The monsters are visually stunning as well, like a fire dragon comprised of a swarm of evil red bats. Some of the plot isn't too original, like the main protagonists wanting their farm a la Of Mice and Men and never seem to be able to make it in the world; but the gorgeous graphics, some seriously sinister scenes, and emotion-evoking dialog makes this film spectacular.

The White Silk Dress is a beautiful and tragic film. It is pretty much depressing throughout the whole thing, and everyone suffers a lot. It takes place in Vietnam with two servants who are in love who lead very oppressed lives and have cruel masters who are allied with the French. Then the Communist revolutionaries come around and kill the rich people; so the lovers are finally free to be together… They go to the south to start a new life and escape the poverty they've always known. But they stay poor, and raise a family entirely of daughters. The couple works hard and still can't seem to earn enough, but just enough to survive. Then there are all the major floods and natural disasters that just add more to their suffering. Things seem okay despite their poverty, until the girls reach the age in which they must wear white silk dresses to go to school, and the family doesn't have enough to buy silk. It gets even worse from then, if that's possible. There's the war between the U.S. and the Vietnamese Communist government, with violent interrogations and bombings. Tragedies abound, and it is just really depressing because everyone in the family loves each other so much, and they all lead such sad, sad, lives.

I saw Shadows in the Palace at the Asian Film Festival. It is a really unique film set during the Chosun Dynasty in Korea. It is a mix of a period piece, murder mystery, and Asian horror, and has an almost entirely female cast and crew. I hardly ever watch horror, so this was pretty horror-filled to me; but it's not just a lot of senseless killing, it has a very intriguing plot that draws you in and makes you want to know what is happening and why things are happening. It starts off with the death of a maid-in-waiting, who is found hung in her room. The imperial medic performs the autopsy and suspects murder, but she's told to say it was a suicide. She presses for an investigation, but she soon discovers a host of secrets and broken rules. Could it be the barren queen, the royal concubine who has borne a son to the king, the head maid, the playboy viscount, the mute, or the crazy maid in waiting? Among the continuing body count, royal torture chambers, solitary confinement, hallucinations, and enraged supernatural forces, this movie is pretty horror-filled… in a very intriguing way.

I saw the preview for A Thousand Years of Good Prayer, which shows a Chinese man talking on a park bench with an Iranian women; both have problems speaking in English but they communicate and talk about their children. I thought it would be a nice heartfelt movie about two immigrants connecting. That was a part of it... but it was a lot more than that.

There is indeed a Chinese man; he is an old rocket scientist and is visiting his 30-some year old daughter in the U.S.; the problem is that they don't talk... almost at all. The setting is a pretty dull-looking suburban apartment complex, and the only thing to do is to go to a nearby park with some ducks. I had a feeling of depression throughout the whole movie. There isn't really anything momentously bad that happens in the movie; maybe it's that nothing huge happens at all and people are just not happy. It was very non-uplifting, especially as there is no clear resolution by the end. There are a couple funny parts, and some of it is pretty charming as it is a reflection of real life. However, I was expecting a very cute and fun feel-good movie, and it wasn't. It was a snippet of time in this family's life, about some pretty severe communication gaps and how difficult it is to heal a whole lifetime of lack of intimacy and hurt. Some wounds don't heal overnight, and some lessons can't be learned in a short period of time. The film has sincerely stellar acting, and it is serious in a very real way. I can't say I enjoyed the film and maybe it's because it hit too close to home, but I can say it was very good.

The Band's Visit has to be one of the most awesome movies I've seen this year. We start with the Alexandria Ceremonial Orchestra, which is pretty much a police orchestra. The Egyptian band is traveling to a town in Israel to celebrate the opening of an Arabic cultural center. Instead, however, they end up in the wrong town and there is no bus out of this desolate, culture-dead ghost town until the next day. So we follow the band for the day and see who they really are. There is the serious loner of a director, his number one follower who would like to conduct but is never allowed to and who wanted to write a concerto on his clarinet but never finished, and the playboy who is always hitting on the girls. And yet, they all have more to them and this is the interesting journey of discovery on which we are set.

This film is beautiful and absolutely astoundingly perfect in so many ways. Most obvious is the play on the play on language. Most of the Egyptian band members speak in Arabic, though some speak in broken or highly accented English, which becomes the only way of communicating with the Israelis. A restaurant owner in the forlorn Israeli town offers the band members lodging and convinces her regulars to offer them lodging as well. So the band gets split up, and from there we learn more about each person as well as the people who they are staying with, and their lives. There are awkward scenes and it seems there is not too much to say at times. But the dialogue is so perfect, maybe because everyone must carefully choose their words in order to communicate in the common English language. At the same time, there is the idea of listening to a foreign language and hearing music and understanding the meaning by sound, by a different kind of knowledge than fluency.

One of the more poignant parts of the film is when one of the Israeli restaurant regulars talks to the follower Egyptian orchestra guy who never finished his clarinet concerto. We stare at the happy wedding picture of the regular guy with his wife after a dinner that showed that their marriage is not a happy one. Additionally, it's the baby's room, and the baby is in front of the two men and there are toys everywhere. The two men awkwardly sit together in front of the crib, and then the Israeli guy tells the Egyptian clarinet player, "You know, maybe this I how your concerto ends. I mean… not a big end with trumpets and violins, maybe this is the finish. Just like that, suddenly. Not sad, not happy. Just, ah, a small room, a lamp, a bed, child sleeps, and… (pauses, gestures with hands, laughs out of embarrassment for taking long to think of the words) tons of loneliness." Later, we are with the director and the playboy. The director had just had a rather distant one-on-one time with the restaurant owner lady, and now the three of them are back at her flat. The playboy takes out his instrument. A lone trumpet plays. The director and the lady stare off. There are so many picturesque, just gorgeous and lovely scenes in this film. It is filled with the sorrowful knowledge of how life is and what you know will come by experience.

Finally, after the awkwardness, the silence and heartbreak, we see what this group can do. I sank back into my seat, now intimately familiar with every member of the orchestra, and see them come together and revel in the beauty of classical Arabic orchestral music. This film is simply gorgeous and delicious to watch, see and here. It is a breath-taking experience that makes you think, and one I highly recommend.

This movie was fun to watch. If you like cheerleading and just watching it with some upbeat music playing in the background, that's what Bring it On: In it to Win has to offer. There was an obligatory spirit stick and cheer camp, and some East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry with a few references to West Side Story, but mostly it was a lot of excuses to have some cool routines on camera. They cheer in a camp that is sort of a pseudo-Disneyland, which was pretty interesting in that they have a lot of fun backgrounds that can look sort of fake but fun and vacation-ish. Everyone is pretty, from the blonde captains and vampire goth girl to the black best friend and "gay" guy. Oh, and the half Filipino-half German love interest of the protagonist is really cute, and the first scene he is in, he is topless. In any case, this was brainless eye candy that was fun and just, a lot of fun.

Millennium Actress (Sennen joyu in Japan) is a poignant and beautifully created animated film that comes off more as a stirring foreign film than an anime. Even the drawings and movie posters in the film are stylized as movie posters used to be painted in the 1930s. The film is about a director and his camera man who go deep into Japan's countryside to get an interview with a once-legendary actress that stopped acting at the height of her career and who is now elderly and reclusive. The result is a journey through the aging actress's memories, from her lifelong love as a child for an anti-government painter before World War II to the many famous roles she has played; the scenes change as rapidly as the actress's mind drifts, and powerful emotions from her memories trigger scene changes as we travel with her in her mind. We learn about her life and eventually the secret connections between the many characters in her life and films, including the director who goes to her house for the homage interview.

King of Masks (Bian Lian in China) is a shockingly beautiful and profoundly touching film. Winner of 16 awards from around the world, this film based on a true story centers on Wang Bianlian, a street performer in 1930s China who is growing older but has no heir to pass on his art of face-change opera. He has a unique talent of quickly changing masks in performance, and no one knows how he does it. He has a longing desire to have a grandson, as his art is a family heirloom that can only be passed on to a male heir. We then go to the streets, and see that people are selling their children because they can't afford to take care of them: some are even begging to take their daughters for free, because daughters are not worth much in this society. Wang Bianlian's story goes on from there.

The film was so astonishingly good, the acting was amazing, and the issues were so weighty and well-addressed. There is the gender inequality and the depressing fact that in this time and place, no one wants a little girl. Also interesting to note is that the famed opera actor who always plays a woman and is known as the Living Bodhisattva is a man who dresses as a woman, and while he is famous and well-respected, he regards himself as something low, a half woman. As we go further into the film, the face the issues of human slave trade and its demand and thus the lack of a possible solution for it, the brutality and corruption of the military and police, and the helplessness and lack of power any individual can face due to unfortunate events or even good intentions.

This is definitely one of the best movies I have ever seen in my life, and Xu Zhu, the actor who plays Wang Bianlian, presents yet another beautiful performance.

I just watched The Squid and the Whale. My sister recommended it to me, saying it was an indie film with a ton of awards and some famous people like Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, and William Baldwin. Having not watched an independent film in some time, and having planned on a date with my Mom for this movie, I was excited to watch it. Boy was I disappointed.

The movie is set in the 1980s in Brooklyn, and is about a divorce between two writers and how the separation affects everyone in the family, including their two boys. Everyone hurts everyone, they all cuss at each other, they're all having sex with someone inappropriate or masturbating in public. The job does a good job at making you feel uncomfortable, and maybe that's the point of the movie. Usually, though, there is a point to the movie. What's the point of this one? Divorce is hard? Well, everyone knows that. It was predictable and just boring with a crass overtone. I started cutting mosaic tiles in the middle of the movie because it was so boring and predictable. It was definitely not an enjoyable film, or even thought-provoking. It didn't even do a good job at making me feel depressed, if that was what it was supposed to do, although it did make me mad at my sister for recommending this stupid film which was a definite waste of my two hours.