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Okay, this one wasn’t my choice, honest. Le notti erotiche dei morti viventi (Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead) (Joe D’Amato) was viewed as part of an ongoing series of “odd” or cultish films that my friend Ryan and I are going through. (Our previous film was Pasolini’s Sal?ɬ? (1976), which you will probably never hear me speak of.) Anyway, this sexploitation film was… I don’t know. I don’t think that either of us were expecting it to be good - we just wanted to see it for the sake of seeing a genre piece with such a cult following.

We both know a lot about tons of different films and directors, with a little bit of crossover; granted, Ryan is way more into the B-movie obscurities than I am. I do enjoy zombie movies and was interested in seeing an extreme example of the classic sex-and-violence combo.

So here’s the story: A rich guy bought an island on which he wants to build a resort. Nobody will take him to it, because the supposedly deserted island is believed by locals to be populated by zombies that are controlled by a cat. Yes, a cat. (We do see the cat, and it makes some very funny noises. Spielberg definitely took notes from this movie for his Jurassic Park noises.) The only person who will take him to the island is George (Larry O’Hara aka Louis Montefiori, a frightening beast of a man), but his crew is too scared to come along. This may be because a zombie just attacked somebody right next to his docked boat. Anyway, one thing lead to another (many times, and in more than one way, if you know what I mean) and then FINALLY the zombies appear. They move so slowly that I was surprised that they were violent. Our hero boat-driver, George, is the only survivor, thanks to the small idol given to him by the beautiful Luna (Laura Gemser). She is special because she seduces each of the film’s main characters, and doesn’t appear in photos taken of her.

The dubbed audio track was hilarious. The sex scenes were explicit, and there were more of them than zombie scenes. They were also really bad. Well, the zombie scenes were bad, too. I guess the whole movie was bad, but it was still fairly entertaining to watch.

Apparently D’Amato is known as “Italy’s worst director”, and he admitted to being a bad director, with interest only in making money. He made films in almost every genre, taking whatever was popular at the moment and completely exploiting it in with as low a budget as possible. IMDB lists 189 directing credits, and I’m going to see them all!

Not really.

Last night I watched Le Fils, directed by Belgium brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. I thought it was excellent. It is a story about the power of forgiveness and I was genuinely touched. The entire film was shot with hand-held cameras, which mostly followed the main character, Olivier (played by Olivier Gourmet). It must have been an intense exercise for Gourmet, as his movements and body language need, and succeed, to tell us more about his character than the sparse dialogue. You can learn a lot about somebody by staring at their back. There also no music or sound effects.

The story is told slowly but the film does not lag. The interactions between characters is authentic. Their ways of doing and saying things carried the story and developed their characters, as opposed to what they were necessarily doing or saying. Gourmet was perfect as Olivier: he communicated a justifiably curious combination of creepy, contemplative, sad and damaged - I read somewhere that this role was created especially for him (perhaps that is why his given name and the character’s name are the same).

I really had no idea where it was going. At times I thought that he was kind of perverted in his way of looking at women, and then perverted in a different way as he follows around a teenaged boy. There were quite a few times when I thought that something bad was going to happen. I felt as confused as the fictional Olivier surely did. It was riveting and satisfyingly voyeuristic to watch. The story unfolded just slowly enough. The portrayals of a troubled youth and a troubled adult, and each of their questionable need to interact, were strong and real.

Happy Together was my first Wong Kar Wai film and I absolutely loved it. I had seen his name around a lot, and this was the first sent to me of his films that I have Zipped. It premiered at Cannes in 1997 and earned Wong the Best Director Award.

Apparently, Wong belongs to Hong Kong’s Second New Wave. Great, another “wave” for me to learn about. Anyway, the camera work was amazing. The actors were intense and riveting to watch. He switched a few times from black & white to color (I’d like to state my theory about why he did this, but I don’t want to be wrong). The picture was often grainy and bleak. There isn’t much story, but through the actors’ performances and his directing style, Wong gives us a stark and convincing portrayal of isolation, intimacy, disorientation and companionship.

I loved this movie and I can’t wait to see more. Oh, I just realized that I have also seen his contribution to BMW Film’s The Hire - a piece entitled The Follow.

I watch a lot of movies, but after watching Les quatres cents coups (The 400 Blows) (Fran?ɬßois Truffaut) last night, I realized that I still have a lot to learn. For example, I actually had to look up “New Wave French Cinema” to see what the big deal was about this film. I mean, I loved it, but I didn’t realize why it was so “influential”. It turns out that this was one of the first, and therefore definitive, films in the style of la Nouvelle Vague.

I thought this was a brilliant film. The characters, dialogue, improvisations, sound, long shots, etc. were all captivating and entirely fulfilling. I can’t remember what led me to add it to my Ziplist, but I’m very glad that I happened upon this first installment of “The Adventures Of Antoine Doinel“.

My friend Jay says that this is “the perfect Jason Chu movie”, but I don’t know what that means…

I’ve heard a lot about it, so I figured it was worth a trip to Bay Video to rent Koroshiya 1 (Ichi the Killer) (Takashi Miike). A few days ago I watched Gozu, and wanted to see what Miike’s most popular film was all about. All I knew to expect was a lot of graphic violence… and I definitely got it.

I’m pretty desensitized to violence, but every once in a while I find myself putting my hands in front of my face and peering through my fingers. That happened once in this movie (the last time it happened was, embarassingly, in Ginger Snaps). So, yeah, There’s a lot of graphic violence, but it was great! It was also a nice little psychological thriller.

Miike’s style is very slick. I love Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1 (I hated Vol. 2) and it was interesting to see where he got some of his visuals from.

Gozu. Hmm. The only other Takashi Miike film that I’ve seen is ?É‚Äùdishon (Audition) (1999), and they are both pretty screwed up.

Miike cites David Lynch as one of his influences, and I can totally see it - what’s interesting is that I don’t like Lynch, but so far I do like Miike. Anyway, I read the essay on the DVD after watching the film, and there was no way that I would have been able to identify all of the references he makes throughout it. For example, I’d never actually heard the term yakuza, but now I know that I’ve seen a bunch of these such Japanese gangster movies. I ‘m also not familiar with the many Buddhist references that appeared throughout the film.

It was fun to watch. Creepy, but not scary. It seemed to be very tongue-in-cheek in regards to genre and style. It’s always nice to see a director having fun while making a movie. One of the first pieces of dialogue is a character saying something like, “Don’t take anything that I’m going to say seriously.” I think that was Miike telling us, through one of his characters: to sit back and relax, and allow him to have his fun.

After many years of recommendations, I finally sat down and watched Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson). I don’t really have much to say about it, except that I liked it. I didn’t find the character development to be exceptionally deep, but there was definitely enough to give the actors something to work with (which they did). Anyway, it was a dark comedy/coming-of-age story that was pretty enjoyable to watch.

I laughed out loud a few times. Tobey Maguire’s character was both pathetic and comical. Michael Douglas’ was quirky and messed-up, and it was morbidly fun to watch his circumstances go from bad to worse (I would have liked to know a bit more about his book, “The Arsonist’s Daughter”, though). Katie Holmes’ part was thankfully small. Also, I think this is the first Robert Downey Jr. movie that I have ever seen, except for Natural Born Killers, which I have blocked from memory.

This movie sucked. I’m not sure how I came across this one on Zip, but ?ɂǨ cause d’un gar?ɬßon (You’ll Get Over It) (Fabrice Cazeneuve) should never have been on my list. It was really boring and full of ridiculously clich?ɬ© dialogue. I can’t believe I even sat through the whole thing. Thank God for the FF button. The subtitles are imprinted on the picture, so unfortunately I didn’t miss any of the idiotic dialogue.

The only work by Oscar Wilde that I’ve read is The Picture Of Dorian Grey (1890), and I absolutely loved it. I’d heard good things about the movie Wilde (Brian Gilbert) and finally got around to renting it this week.

Its main stars are Stephen Fry (Wilde) and Jude Law (Bosie), and I think they both did an excellent job. One element that I found to be lacking was evidence of Oscar’s self-proclaimed brilliance. There is a lot of witty dialogue, and a couple of scenes where he certainly praises himself, but not nearly as much as I had anticipated. I was also under the impression that he began to have homosexual experiences much earlier than what was portrayed in the movie. (The movie shows him being seduced in his home while his wife was sleeping, and strongly suggests that it was his first indulgence.) Further, his works were merely alluded to either in passing or in short scenes rather than in any detail, which I thought would have been more interesting (to the literary crowd, at least).

I did a bit of research and it seems that the events in the latter part of the film are quite accurate, to the point of word-for-word dialogue in some points. I’m not surprised, as it just “felt” better than most of the scenes leading up to it.

All in all, I thought it was a good movie, but for some reason I was pretty restless while watching it and kept looking to see how much time had elapsed. I like period films, and the sets, costumes and dialogue were pretty convincing. And thankfully, most of the skin shots are not of Stephen Fry.

I also watched O Fantasma (Jo?ɬ£o Pedro Rodrigues) on DVD with my friend Michael this evening. I saw part of it on Showcase a few years ago, but this was the first time I saw it in its entirety. It follows around Sergio, a young and attractive garbage collector, as he wanders around Lisbon, Portugal. We get to see him engage in some curious behaviour: stalk a handsome biker/swimmer, rummage through garbage (and then wear, and masturbate with, the speedo and gloves that he finds), masturbate in the lovely style of erotic asphyxiation, have random (and fairly graphic) sex, get handcuffed and basically molested by a tough cop (who I think is the same man he had earlier found handcuffed and gagged in a car, and performed a “favor” to, but left him there), break into his biker/swimmer’s house and dump him tied up and gagged out of a second story window, and last but not least: dress up in a skin-tight leather outfit and sneak dog-like around town, only to disappear into the wastelands which surround the city (but only after taking a dump on the floor). Charming!

So… yeah. I’m sure that one can draw a lot of deep and metaphorical meaning out of this film, but it seemed more to be rather self-indulgent on the part of the director. It was as if he has all of these fantasies and was getting off on subjecting others watching them (not to mention the poor actor who actually had to do them, and hasn’t made a movie since. I think he was excellent, though). We watched a few scenes with the director’s commentary on, and Rodrigues seemed as confused as I was (”Here is Sergio walking down the street. He is wearing a leather suit.” Uh… yeah, thanks.). I would have liked to find out how he got the handcuffs off, but the director was too busy placing artful lapses of silence into his commentary to reveal that information.

“O Fantasma”’s English title is “The Phantom”. I think that the title is appropriate, as Sergio definitely to recedes into a ghost-like role as he roams the city unseen. Actually, perhaps he doesn’t exactly “roam”. He seems to know where he’s going next; it looks like he’s actually sniffing out a trail, which is an example of one of the dog-like traits that he adopts. Some of the reviews I’ve read suggest that the second act of the film, when he is in the skin tight leather suit, shows him acting in an almost uncontrollable psycho-sexual state that maybe have been caused by not getting what he “needs” from both his male and female lovers. It is as if his natural animal instincts are awakened to overtake and then dehumanize him. Hmm, that’s a lot of babbling on my part. I’ll stop now.

The DVD wasn’t very good quality. For most of the second half, it looked like they tried to digitally remove some kind of subtitle. There was a vaguely yellow smudge on the bottom of the screen, and when I moved up close to the television to check it out, I could make out some letters. Oh, well… at least it was widescreen.