#101- Yi-Yi

Quick recap: Three generations of a Taiwanese family go through every sort of hardship you can imagine. It’s like Degrassi but not Canadian and a serious lack of teen pregnancy.  On the plus side, no Drake!

You'll always be Jimmy.

You’ll always be Jimmy.

Fun (?) fact: Most of the actors in the movie were relatively unknown at the time. The director did this to add to the realism of the film.

My thoughts: ‘3 hour movie about a family with hardships’, I texted my husband, adding a very bored emoji to the end of the sentence for emphasis. You know the one I’m talking about. He texted back in sympathy, but I knew I was on my own. ‘There better be a few deaths,’ I muttered to myself and then settled in.

The first half hour of the film was very hard to follow because there were so many characters and because the subtitles were confusing. I was finally able to identify the main characters and that helped somewhat: NJ, the father, his wife Min-Min and their two kids Ting-Ting and Yang-Yang, Min-Min’s mother and also A-Di, the brother. Throughout the course of the movie each character will go through something life changing, and each hardship will be dealt with almost completely alone. It sounds like every melodrama ever, but for some reason it works in Yi-Yi. I especially loved how each storyline was separate and yet it weaved in and out with the other story lines, yet nothing felt overblown or……well,melodramatic.

Although NJ is the main character, it is the grandmother I was most drawn to. She is onscreen for barely 10 minutes before suffering a major stroke. The rest of the film is her laying in the apartment, breathing tubes and feeding tubes hooked up to her. As her family seemingly crumbles around her, she continues to lay in a coma and thus becomes the perfect listener. Her grand daughter, Ting-Ting feels guilt from the beginning because she feels she has caused the stroke. She asks for her grandmother’s forgiveness several times and is finally granted it at the end of the film. Ting-Ting’s mother, Min-Min, has a spiritual crisis that manifests itself after she realizes how boring her life is. There were so many heartbreaking scenes, but this one did it for me. There was something so sincere about Min-Min as she realized she was supposed to care for her mother by talking to her, and yet had nothing to say because everything was the same. At this point, it was easy to forget I was watching a movie as it begin to feel more like a documentary.

The little boy in the film, Yang-Yang, is probably the cutest kid ever. I’m generally weary of cute child actors, but I loved this one from the beginning. After coming to the conclusion that people will never see their full reality, he decides to take pictures of things people don’t generally see: mosquitos and the back of people’s heads. Yang-Yang is in constant trouble at school and it isn’t until the final scene of the film where everything comes together and I saw how misunderstood his actions were. I won’t give away the ending, although it’s really not much of a surprise, but I will say that I’m glad the movie ended realistically and not all perfectly wrapped up.

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Final review: 4/5.  Most people would love Yi-Yi, but the length is a little long. Nothing felt too drawn out but it’s still a lot to ask for in an audience.

Up next: The Sting. Don’t forget to send in your movie suggestions to mabelsfa56@gmail.com or by commenting on a post!

In retrospect

The first hundred movies down, I wanted to do a little post recapping a few of the more memorable films I have watched so far. It has taken me almost exactly two years to go from #1 until now, so here’s hoping the next hundred won’t take so long!

Saddest movie:

The Red Shoes, because movies involving dancing are always tragic

Most ‘WTF’ moments in a movie:

The Tin Drum. The less said, the better.

Movie to most question my life choices:

Funny Games. 

Movie to best understand a Simpsons reference:

Citizen Kane. ‘Rosebud’ from Season 5 is a wonderful episode on its own, back when the Simpsons had heart. Watching ‘Citizen Kane’ enhanced many of the more obscure references for me.

Movie I was most likely to utter, ‘War is hell, man’:

Rome, Open City, which was also a top contender for ‘saddest movie’

Most boring:

A tough category, but I’ll have to go with The Dead

Most overrated:

Psycho. I’m still disappointed.

Hidden Gem:

Crumb

Movie in which I rolled my eyes the most:

Written on the Wind. Another tough category to narrow down.

And finally…… Most misleading title:

My brilliant Career, in which the main character was neither brilliant or had a career.

And with that, I’m ready to move on. For my next few movies, I am asking my readers (Hi, Mom!) to send in suggestions for movies they would like to see me review. A couple of things to consider:

  • The movie has to be on my ‘1001 Movies to See Before You Die’ list. *I tried to post a link, but can’t get to work currently.*
  • No horror movies because I watch those in October.

You can contact me by commenting on this post, emailing at mabelsfa56@gmail.com, or tying your suggestion to a big red balloon and sending it off into the air. Feel free to recommend anything, whether it is something you love or something with which to torture me. If I can survive El Topo, I can survive anything.

#100- Shawshank Redemption

Special thanks to Mike for requesting this movie! I especially appreciate that it wasn’t a French film.

Quick recap: Andy Dufresne, former banker, is now a prisoner serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife and lover. Although he has been wrongly convicted, all is not lost as Dufresne now has plenty of time to devote to his hobby of rock carving. 

Fun (?) fact: Normally I don’t find trivia about actors who were considered for a role to be very interesting. However, I could practically hear the Sad Trombone of Regret when reading that Kevin Costner turned down the role of Dufresne to star in ‘Waterworld’.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My thoughts: I chose Shawshank Redemption as my hundredth movie because I feel it to be one of my biggest pop culture holes. Considering it is currently ranked as the #1 movie to see according to IMDb, I decided to go ahead and watch it. One thing you should know about me is that the more something is recommended to me, especially with a plea like, ‘you will love it!’, I most likely will not. I prefer to find things I love on my own and there’s just something about loving something that everyone else does that makes it less special. Totally doesn’t make me a hipster, though. (Side note: The Lumineers and Mumford and Sons are dead to me.)

I hate this meme too

I hate this meme too

All that to say that as much as I tried to find fault in this movie, I couldn’t find one. And I tried really, really hard. I had a whole set up written about how schmaltzy and too convenient the ending is, but after thinking about it, I don’t know if I would’ve enjoyed something darker. It did bother me how quickly the entire prison warmed up to Andy but then again, this is Stephen King we are talking about. That’s kind of his thing: good vs. evil in the most simplest of terms. Andy is Good, supernaturally Good. His one character flaw of helping the Warden funnel money into secret accounts is actually another example of Goodness. And the Warden is evil and so must be destroyed by the power of Good. So in terms of how a King story is supposed to turn out, this one is spot on.

The acting is flawless, the scenery beautiful and tragic, and the plot runs at a perfect pace. As for what I took from the film- not much. The theme that hope keeps us alive in the most dire of circumstances is not a new one and Shawshank Redemption, although flawless in many ways, doesn’t completely sell the idea to me. Andy had hope for getting out but he was also really smart and in the end, saved himself. It wasn’t hope so much as a detailed plan. And as for his friend Red, he had hope that eventually got him out of prison but what really saved him in the end was a good friend.

I was sucked into Shawshank Redemption from the very beginning. I’m definitely glad I chose it for #100 because it was a great reminder why I’m doing this project in the first place.

Final Review: 5/5.

Up next: A very special announcement and a recap of what I’ve watched so far

 

 

#99- The Bigamist

Quick recap: A man is married to two women at the same time and of course, neither of them know of the other. Do zany hijinks ensue??? No.

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Fun (?) fact: This movie was rather devoid of ‘fun’ facts, unless you count Jack Benny’s real house being in the movie. I certainly don’t and I’m silently judging those of you that do.

Jack Benny is suspicious of the fact being labeled 'fun'

Jack Benny is suspicious of the fact being labeled ‘fun’

My thoughts: With a title as straightforward as this one, I was expecting something a little more lighthearted, like ‘Oh, that bigamist! Will he ever learn?’ And then one of the women turns to the camera and does a cute shrug of her shoulders and everyone laughs. What The Bigamist ended up being was almost opposite, bordering on melodrama. The story starts with a couple-Harry and Eve Graham- trying to adopt a child since Eve can’t conceive on her own. Mr. Jordan, the adoption coordinator, has the two sign a form consenting to a full background check. Eve happily signs hers while you can almost see the sweat poring out of Harry. Two minutes into the movie and I already know who The Bigamist is! I’m grateful to watch a film that gets right to the point, although I wonder how it would’ve played to keep it a secret like trying to figure out who the murderer is. Is it the postman? Is it the waiter? Is it the guy with shifty eyes, sweat poring out of every orifice?

I was a little surprised by the sensitivity shown to all characters involved, especially considering that no one is really painted as the bad guy. Eve is unable to conceive a child of her own and tries to make up for it by being the perfect wife and business partner to Harry. Harry is the overworked husband, commuting constantly from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Feeling very lonely, he strikes up a relationship with another woman that eventually leads to her getting knocked up. As bad as that sounds, once Harry realizes that Phyllis is pregnant (which would have been near impossible for me to understand. The word ‘pregnancy’ is never mentioned. Instead we see Phyllis lying in bed, her stomach completely hidden by a comforter) he asks her to marry him to make things right. Phyllis is also a victim in the situation. She spends the entire movie trying to prove that she doesn’t need anyone and then when she finally admits to needing Harry, he gets arrested for bigamy. Seeing as how this movie was made in the early 50s, I was expecting a lot more woman blaming, but in the end, Harry owned up to everything.

As for the bigamy thing, I’m a little conflicted about who it really hurt. Harry spends most of the movie moaning about how hard it was to keep the secret of two families, but he never really goes into what it’s like to have two wives. Both women seem happy with the situation and both are well cared for. But bigamy is against the law and it was only a matter of time before everything blew up. Is bigamy still a thing? I would imagine that it would be much harder to pull something off these days, what with the Twitters, Facebooks and digital records. The final courtroom scene I felt did a great job summarizing the issue. If Harry had just kept Phyllis as a mistress, no one would’ve really cared. But the fact that he tried to make an ‘honest woman’ out of her is what did him in. It seemed like both women really loved him, but how could they continue?

Dan Savage would probably say DTMFA, or maybe everyone should just go poly!

Dan Savage would probably say DTMFA, or maybe everyone should just go poly!

FInal review: 4/5. Dramatic, but not overly so.

Up next: #100.