Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
This combination of films makes my head hurt. COUNTRY BEARS looks like this generations GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE to me, and I can’t imagine sitting through it if I could physically get up and leave. The commercials creep me out more than any single image from any Cronenberg movie. Seriously. Not a chance.
Ghostboy... you are a brave, brave man.
Howdy,
No sense in a loquacious introduction; enough words can be found in the paragraphs below.
Sex & Lucia
The title of Julio Medem's 'Sex & Lucia' is certainly eyecatching and somewhat appropriate, but it doesn't exactly encompass the themes of the film; however, it's practically impossible to explain why it doesn't work in a simple review. The movie could be described as the story of a man and a woman whose love is tested by his past, or it may be the story of a man whose case of writer's block is cured by the love of a woman, or it may be both of those, or neither. It's not a brain teaser like 'Abres Los Ojos,' but it's also not for the passive viewer.
Medem's last film was the sublime drama 'Lovers Of The Arctic Circle' and here he expands upon that film's ideas of fate, coincidence and sexuality. I'll skip what happens at the very beginning of the film, which is actually part of the ending, and jump ahead to the gorgeous moonlight sex scene in the crystal blue waters of a remote island, between a couple who choose to remain anonymoous to each other. They leave each other's company, and we follow the man back to Madrid, where we learn that he is a novelist named Lorenzo (Tristan Ulloa). He is affronted in a bar one night by a pretty young waitress named Lucia (Paz Vega), who tells him that she's obsessed with his novel, has been stalking him for some time, and is madly in love with him.
He decides then and there that he likes her, and they go out and get drunk and then return to his place and his bed. And they stay there, it seems, living off the sexual electricity that flows between them for days and months and, gradually, years. There is a great deal of sex in these scenes; there is a great deal of sex in the entire film, actually, but during the first hour it is full of blissful, arousing sex that is intimate enough to remind us that 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' wasn't all the graphic at all. The actors are clearly quite -- shall we say -- comfortable with each other, and over that first hour we grow quite comfortable with them as well.
High on love, Lorenzo is inspired to write a new novel, but Lucia doesn't like it as much, because it is full of too much happiness. That upbeat mood is remedied, however, when Lorenzo discovers that his fling under a full moon six years ago has produced a daughter named Luna. He begins to visit her, under the same conditions of anonymity that her mother knew him, and finds himself tempted away from Lucia by the Luna's sexually adventurous babysitter. And so he winds up cheating (almost) on Lucia with his daughter's caretaker in the bed of a woman he once made love to -- which leads to a shocking tragedy. I won't reveal what happens; nor will you be able to predict it, since Medem presents it so obliquely that it we don't know exactly what happened until the end of the film.
Lorenzo begins a new novel, a darkly passionate piece that arouses Lucia but frustrates her, since Lorenzo is suddenly too depressed to pay any attention to her. Up until this point, the film is gloriously freewheeling, but more tragedy occurs, and the film begins to twist itself into a thick mire of coincidence and heavy melodrama that feels like a burden on the spirits that were raised during the first half. I wish Medem had applied a lighter touch to the last act because, even though it doesn't capsize the film, it keeps it from being the great piece of cinema it could have been.
But that doesn't mean it isn't a good film; there is too much vibrant excitement here to ignore it, or forget about it, and what is good is brilliant. The performances by Vega and Ulloa are sweet when they are falling in love and convincing when they are falling out of it; their relationship keeps the movie grounded. On the technical side, the cinematography by Kiko de la Rica is astonishing -- some of the images are so breathtaking and beautiful that they will bring tears to your eyes all by themselves. The movie was shot on the Sony 24p High Definition Video Cameras, the same ones Lucas used for 'Episode 2;' this film looks better than that one, and better than any other previous digital film -- indeed, some of the footage looks better than 35mm (the scenes on the island beach come to mind).
Also worth mentioning is the last shot of the movie, which suggests a sudden twist in the plot, the kind that seems popular among Spanish directors like Medem and his contemporary Alejandro Amnebar. In any other movie, it might have produced a groan. Here, it salvages the movie after its slight derailment. Or maybe it doesn't. As with 'Lovers Of The Arctic Circle,' Medem leaves the ending up to the viewer's own interpretation. This method may seem slightly weary, but after a film that is, alternately, as exuberant and conflicting as this one, it is a welcome surprise.
Green Dragon
The Vietnam War has yielded quite a few films; every now and then, the public and/or critical masses seem to suggest that there have been enough, and yet they keep coming, and more often than not they bring new stories to light, new facets of that massive 'conflict' that had been previously left untold.
Such is Timothy Lihn Bui's 'Green Dragon,' which takes place over the last few months of the war. The setting is not Vietnam, but a refugee camp in the United States, where tens of thousands of Vietnamese sought shelter before starting new lives in America. The film follows several of them through the sadness, confusion and small moments of joy that follow their complete uprooting.
The focus of the story is on Tai Tran (Don Duang), a gentle man in who is taking care of his sister's young boy and girl, waiting for her to arrive at the camp so that they can all leave together. With more refugees arriving daily, the Americans are anxious to move families out of the camp as soon as they can find American sponsors; some people get too comfortable, and they have to be forcefully removed. Tai however, befriends the soldier in charge, Sergeant Jim Lance (Patrick Swayze), and convinces him to let him stay until his sister arrives -- if she arrives. He tells her children daily that she will be there soon, but his hopes and prayers seem to be failing.
Meanwhile, his nephew Minh (Trung Hieu Nguyen), a precocious boy who isn't older than five, befriends the camp's black cook, a quiet fellow named Addie (Forest Whitaker) who spends his time sketching and painting. Addie wins the boy's affection with a drawing of Mighty Mouse, and they gradually become fast friends, although they can barely understand a word they say to each other. Addie lets Minh help him paint a mural in the kitchen; Addie has filled it with images of African American suffering, and Minh, catching on to the idea, adds a section of fiery red, littered with stick figure corpses and bombs falling from airplanes.
The wounds of the war are still felt, and the refugees listen in every day to the radio, learning of the withdrawal of US forces and the communist occupation of Saigon. The pain they go through, as they realize that their loved ones who didn't manage to escape are now likely dead, raises issues usually left untouched in films about the war; why the US became involved at all is usually the question, but here the reason why is given a face, and the question becomes did we do enough?
No one is villfied in the movie, though; Sergeant Lance is portrayed as a compassionate man who cares deeply for these people, and the story is blissfully free of any racist soldiers who see the Vietnamese as anything less than people. Some of the refugees are communist sympathizers, and some are in the camp only by accident; their plight is viewed with sympathy and sadness, as in the scene where an old man learns of the Saigon occupation and kills himself.
There are other little stories I haven't touched upon, some of them happy and some of them utterly heartbreaking. This is a story about the end of a political conflict and the beginnings of thousands of personal ones, as the Vietnamese people set out to integrate themselves in a country that largely unwelcome to them. The film was written by Bui and his brother Tony, who was the director of 'Three Seasons,' another film set in Vietnam. That movie wasn't the stunning achievement that the Sundance Jury made it out to be, but it was a quiet and touching film, and it was a lovely example that films about Vietnam needn't be about the war. 'Green Dragon' is also quiet, but far more moving. Beautifully photographed and scored, and with stunning performances across the board, it is haunting proof that even now, over thirty years later, one hundred more films could be made about the war, and too many stories would still be left untold.
The Country Bears
People often say that there are some movies they couldn't be paid to sit through; I've decided that, when you need money, you'll sit through anything, and so I sat through the press screening of 'Country Bears' and am now writing my reveiw of it. That is the only reason I would give a second though -- capitalism. That is also the only reason Disney made the film in the first place.
I was going to write a humorous facade of a review, describing the way that the movie starts off as the bizarre monstrosity the trailers make it out to be, only to redeem itself in the final act when whatever radioactive waste caused the bears to become talking anthropomorphic creatures also causes all the spiders in Bear Hall to to grow to massive sizes and wreak havoc on the community, violently eviscerating and devouring bears and humans alike, sparing only Christopher Walken, who climbs atop a giant tarantula and leads it straight to little Beary (voiced by Haley Joel Osment), who is promptly chomped in half.
But that would make the movie seem good, and I don't want to do that.
The movie is bad, but in a strange way. It isn't as twistedly awful as 'Freddy Got Fingered,' but it is as random and pointless. It's similar to 'Blues Brothers 2000,' I guess, a horible movie that was still somehow watchable in a perverse sort of way. Perhaps, if you are an individual who chooses to partake in various mind expanding/clouding organic products, you will find this movie delightful, especially the parts with Diedrich Bader, who brings back his character from 'Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back,' or the random musical numbers that range from being competently staged to bad on the level of a cinematic train wreck. At times, director Peter Hastings seems to think he's making a kids' version of 'Almost Famous.' Indeed, not only is there a scene on tour bus with an Elton John song playing, but Elton John actually shows up in the movie, in the flesh! How they couped that one, I'll never know. Nor do I want to.
Me, I spent the whole movie shaking my head and laughing quietly in disbelief that something like this was actually made. I have a beautiful dream, and that is that all other movies based on Disney World attractions -- including the upcoming 'Haunted Mansion' and 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' -- are canned immediately. This dream will not see fruition, I fear, but at least we can take solace in the fact that 'Country Bears' will not make much money. At this point, I am looking up at all the words I've already used on this film, and realizing that I've earned my pay and can terminate this review right now.
Phew. That's it. I need to learn how to be more concise, huh?
As a closing point, I'd like to let everyone in the DFW area, and everyone in Austin who doesn't mind driving to Dallas, that you can see the original Japanese version of 'Ring' on the big screen this coming Saturday at midnight at the Magnolia Theater, by virtue of the Asian Film Festival. What's more, the screening is FREE! How awesome is that? I know I'll be there...
As always, thanks, man. You took one for the team. We’ll remember that.
"Moriarty" out.
