Tag Archives: crime

#410- Cyclo

Quick recap: A young man is robbed of his cyclo, a bike he uses to transport people around Ho Chi Minh City. Unable to pay his debt, he is forced to work for a criminal organization. His older sister is also brought into the gang to be a sex worker.

Fun (?) fact: Cyclo was both made in and banned in Vietnam.

Thoughts and observations:

I don’t know a lot about gangsters or criminal organizations but I do enjoy most movies about the subject and of course, The Sopranos. This gang in Vietnam is NONE of that. Maybe a few people at the very top have money but almost everyone else involved is just trying to survive, which really takes the fun out of everything. The loads of animal violence also made Cyclo just a downer of a film all around.

The concept of a young man working for the mob to pay off a debt isn’t a new one by any means but I was surprised by how much of the plot takes a back seat to the unrelenting poverty everywhere.None of the characters are given proper names, which I think is a really smart way of conveying that their story is just one of many in the city. It’s not that I didn’t care about the brother and sister and wanted them to escape the mob, but that we the audience knows this is just one story of many.  This is not the kind of film that makes you want to jet off to Vietnam. At the same time, though, I didn’t feel like the director was making a moral judgement about the people. He’s not saying this is a country that needs aid and it’s also not inspiration porn about people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s just reality and that’s hard to swallow for me. There are some really beautiful and strange scenes throughout Cyclo and the mixing of poetry added to the dreamlike state I felt I was in at times. It really is a gorgeous film that I think accurately described what was going on in Vietnam in the 90s. But it’s also incredibly dark and the animal violence was almost too much at times.

 

Watchability score: 3/5

Up next: the Naked Spur

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#408- Guys and Dolls

Quick recap: Oh boy. So basically, all the guys want Nathan Detroit to find a place to host his gambling night but all these girls -dolls, if you will- keep mucking things up.

Fun (?) fact: There are very few contractions used for the dialogue. This was to make the characters’ lack of education noticeable, even though they tried to cover it up.

Brando and SInatra did not get along well during filming. Knowing he hated cheesecake, Brando kept flubbing his lines purposefully during the diner so that Sinatra would have to keep eating.

Thoughts and observations: 

  • This is the first time I can say definitively that the movie version is so much better than the live version. Usually I prefer live because it’s so hard to replicate the energy. But when you have Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra in starring roles, how could anything else compare?
  • The dancing is absolutely stunning and the craps game in the sewer might be my favorite number of all time. Brando’s singing, however………at least he admitted it was awful.
  • The chemistry between Brando’s character, Sky Masterson, and Jean Simmons as Sarah Brown was also a high point for me. I wasn’t feeling it at first but the scene where Sarah sobers up at the fountain in Cuba was so sweet and believable. The wedding at the end was a bit of a left turn seeing as how they had just started dating but this was the fifties after all, so why not?
  • My least favorite part of the film were the Hot Box scenes with Adelaide. Were cats sexy back then? Was that really a thing? With lyrics such as ‘talk to me pretty/ ‘Here kitty kitty!/ and pet me poppa, poppa pet me nice’, I could barely look at the screen. The later number ‘Take Back Your Mink’ was a little better because it involved stripping, which is sexier than cats, I suppose.
  • I recognized a couple of the songs, mainly ‘Luck Be a Lady’ but most didn’t stick out to me. That being said, I felt like the music was really well integrated with the story. Yes, people burst into song but even when they moved, it was very graceful and purposeful so singing just made sense in this world. I especially enjoyed the gamblers at the mission and how they were able to keep their gruffness even as they sang.

Watchability score: 5/5. The more I think about it, the more I love it!

Up next: Solaris

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#404- Chungking Express

Quick recap: The first part of the film follows a policeman who wants to fall in love before his cans of pineapple expire. The second half involves a fast food worker in love with a policeman (not the same one). When he doesn’t seem interested, she breaks into his apartment and spruces up the place.

But now I can’t stop thinking about pineapple

Fun (?) fact: The movie is filmed in sequence, with director Wong Kar-Wai writing the next portion of the script the night or morning of shooting.

Thoughts and observations:

There were parts of Chungking Express that were so confusing to me, like trying to figure out what kind of food Faye was making when she worked with her cousin. But then other parts were intimately familiar, like Officer 223 setting an arbitrary expiration on his single life. As most people know, jumping back into a relationship to get over a previous one doesn’t usually end well, but it’s what keeps you going sometimes. The same could be said about vowing to hit on the next woman to walk in the bar, yet Officer 223 does it anyway and ultimately feels better. I loved the ambiguous ending of the first story, as he goes out for a run to expel all wetness from his body. The woman he ‘fell in love’ with never really seemed into him (maybe something to do with her actually being a drug mule and looking for a lost shipment), but the night he spent with her seemed to be what needed to happen.

In the second half of the film, the audience comes across another lovelorn officer- this one goes by 663, who was just dumped by a flight attendant. He is so deeply in denial that it’s over, that he barely notices Faye, the fast food worker who instantly falls in love with him. And here again, I found myself relating so much to her character. I’ve never broken into my crush’s house and redecorated but I have created a dream world in my mind imagining what life could be like together. The ending of this story is also ambiguous, but maybe less enjoyable for me because I so wanted the two of them to fall in love together. And maybe they did, but it also reminds me how love can feel so consuming in the moment yet not be the end of the world when it fails to happen.

The director’s use of color and staging intimate shots made me realize there is a third love story- this one about Hong Kong. I could’ve just watched scenes of people walking and eating and chatting for hours. It’s a city so alive with possibility. No wonder these people felt it so important to be in love. I also enjoyed the soundtrack, although I admit to tiring of ‘California Dreamin” after the 4th go round. Still, much of Chungking Express reminded me of Manhattan, in that it follows Woody Allen’s weirdo relationship but the setting overpowers the plot in the most powerful way.

Watchability score: 4/5

Up next: A Place in the Sun

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#395- Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song

Quick recap: I’m just going to use the description from IMDb because it is perfectly stated: ‘After saving a Black Panther from some racist cops, a black male prostitute goes on the run from “the man” with the help of the ghetto community and some disillusioned Hells Angels.’

Yeah. That’s what I watched.

Fun (?) fact: The band Earth, Wind, and Fire contributed to this film but have still not been properly compensated.

from season 5- Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Badassss Song

Thoughts and Observations:

Still hungover after my encounter with Shaft, I had nothing but good vibes going into this movie. Finally, my film education can truly begin!

…..And the first scene of the movie is of an early teenage boy having his first sexual encounter. The audience learns that this is the origin of Sweetback, who is apparently really good at sex. My expectations of watching another revolutionary film began to tank. It’s hard to find anything I enjoyed about Sweet Sweetback’s Badassss Song but just like Pink Flamingos, this is not a movie meant for me. This a community, a group of people, that I did not grow up with and so can not really comment on. From the viewpoint of someone who just enjoys movies, this was incredibly hard to sit through. The acting is very stiff and amateur and the film quality leaves a lot to be desired. Yet, it also fascinated to me to feel like I was watching something ‘real’. The plot wasn’t real but the encounters with the community felt more like someone had just turned on a camcorder and started recording than it did a filmmaker orchestrating the whole thing.

Watchability score: 1/5. There’s only so much I can take of watching a guy run.

Up next: Babette’s Feast

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