With a script by Tarantino, and being directed by the guy responsible for blockbuster mainstream crap like Top Gun, this could have turned out an self referential exercise in explosion and meanness. Instead, this is a gritty and funny roller coaster ride of a movie, with an awesome cast and a wonderfully reckless storyline. Funny how this one went entirely by me when it came out.

Interestingly, this script already raises the issues Tarantino’s Kill Bill got criticized for: if violence is an aesthetic component of storytelling, am abstract dance with blood as a costume, rather than a realistic deptiction of its physical and psychological consequences, does that make the movie itself an act of violence? I don’t personally think so, but it might be a hard case to make.

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What a strange movie. Reminiscent of the director’s earlier “Cube”, this has less of the grim deadliness, and more levity, but also a bit too much jumpy goofiness for the sake of its central metaphor. It’s the story of two underdog friends living in a derelict house between two freeways in Toronto, who one fateful day wish the world away and find themselves stranded in a white, bouncy Nirvana – in a typical silly twist, the first thing one of the characters throws into the whiteness to see if it can be walked upon is a statue of Buddha. Subsequent fights between the friends lead them to them wish away more and more of what little they have, and it is a surprise that the movie doesn’t end with pure whiteness, like Cube did, but with… ah, well, you’ll just have to watch it, because I’m not going to tell you.

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This is an almost literal translation of Capotes book to the screen, and it compares very favorably both with his writing, and the recent movie “Capote”, about his own role in the trial of Hickock and Smith and the role of the book in his life. Some odd choices aside (why did the script change Capote’s name?), this is a gripping true murder story, intense, yet never sensational. The central ambiguity of the title, which refers both to the act and the punishment, is made too explicit for my taste in some of the lines toward the end, but the subject is just important enough, that a bit of preaching is forgivable.

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This biopic of the Dalai Lama would impress me much more, and be a much more valuable contribution to understanding and solving the plight of Tibet, if it didn’t look like Cirque de Soleil on dope. While I can’t blame the traditional garments and designs of Tibet for having been appropriated to an updated version of the myth of the noble savage western progressives seem to love so much, I can blame Scorsese for presenting the struggle between what clearly is a feudal society where extreme poverty and lavish palaces stand side by side and the upheavals of the modern age, namely the invasion of technology and the Chinese cultural revolution, in a way so heavily slanted as to lose its trustworthyness. It’s too bad, because I suspect even a fully realistic depiction of the Tibetan aristorcracy would make the communist Chinese look quite bad. But cinematography, scope and acting compensate handsomely for these ideological squabbles.

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This is a very entertaining and cinematically inspiring movie, but oddly that’s not due so much to how it tells its tale – which, in fact, drags a bit toward the end, and could have lost a few of the lengthier asides – but to what that tale actually is. The history of LA based Z channel’s amazing programming, and the simple fact that it did exist, bringing all of those offbeat und underrated movies to an intelligent audience, essentially counteracting the stupid culture suppressing forces of market and money, is both heartening and disturbing. For if it’s possible to do TV without simultaneuously numbing the viewers mind and cranking up their aggression with marketing, why is it not happening anywhere? Give us more programming tailored to that “Uncommon Denominator” Z worked so magnificently toward, you bastards!

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The first part of this felkt like someone had invented a new cipher for social communication and forgot to tell me about it. Nothing anybody said seemed to make any sense not within the plot, not as commentary. But eventually the fog lifted (it might have just been the fog of history, anyway), and everything made sense and dissolved into sweet, sweet nothings. Which turned out to be the movie’s point in the first place. Fun, and so, so money.

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There is quite a few gaffes in this movie, the plot is nonexistent, the action drags on forever in places, and the acting oscillates between solid and silly. Still, this is one of the finest martial arts movies ever made. Lee’s technique is amazing, and the surroundings and characters are just done well enough not to intrude.

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Expecting a filmed version of Harrer’s memoir, lending visuals and speed to the somewhat sluggish pace and skeletal outlines of the book, I was annoyed to see many changes in plot and a focus on the superficial events rather than their meaning. I also didn’t like the fact that in a movie about foreign places and experiences of strange cultures, everybody speaks english wich an accent to indicate the language used, except for a few places with correct language chunks thrown in. The latter double the problem, because now there’s not only an annoying accent, it’s also inconsisten. Harrer’s trek across the alien planes and up the bureaucracy of an unknown and bewildering country here comes down to lack of food, injured feet and a little brush with robbers; the fascination with the double nature of the wise leader/child is overshadowed by a dubious plotline of paternal guilt, and the overdramatized development of Harrer from cliched asshole to understanding wise man is in itself a chliche that could have done with some development. The chinese invasion in the end adds nothing but an uneasy feeling of activism, and the closeing scene in Austria is confusing. The cinematography is great though, even if it was shot in the Andes, because the Chinese wouldn’t allow filming in the Himalaya. I found myself oddly touched to find that Harrer died not a week ago, as though my having watched this movie so close to his death made it more meaningful. Mysteries of the human mind.

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This was supposed to be the heartwarming, quirky and funny, yet profound story of a mentally handicapped prodigy icefisher, who has the fish themselves tell him from under the ice how to catch them, but somehow it didn’t come together. Neither the characters nor the acting can convince, and the plot is so thoroughly overconstructed it doesn’t interest me for one second. While the final scene of Albert walking off into the white, trailed by his disciple icefishermen, who rather than laugh about him – as his overbearing mother would have him believe – submit to his superior authority, is very poetic, the rest of what this movie wanted to be stays under the ice. Someone should have listened more closely to capture it.

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I guess I first have to say how touching this film is, nor how necessary it is to provide an, albeit small, window into a hidden world of hopelessness and despair, and the inspiring quality not only of the movie, but also of the photographers heartfelt need to do something to help save the futures, and indeed probably lives, of the children she taught in Calcutta’s red light district. Now that’s out of the way – I was actually wondering at several points during the movie, if the portrayal of these kids as very talented artists, while certainly true, does not mislead the audience into separating the victims of social injustice into those whose ruin will be a loss to us connoisseurs of the arts, and those who won’t be so sorely missed. Surely, if we could save the precious ones, things would already be much better.
Nobody should have to live in those conditions, whatever the quality of their drawings or their grades at school, and there remains a bitter taste of defeat in the end, when out of the nine kids all but three seem to be falling back into their doom. But in another sense, a single saved child is already a triumph, so maybe I’m quite wrong. It’s a great movie either way.

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