The first South Korean film I didn't like

Hard as this is to believe: a South Korean indie-arty film shot in black-and-white - and I didn't like it? Yes, in this case, though the film had all the earmarks of the kind of work I usually go for in a big way, I couldn't stand watching "The Day He Arrives" and abandoned it after 40 minutes rather than waste even more of my time. If I were to describe the film, which I will, I will no doubt make it sound better than it actually is, which is exactly the problem - it's a very "teachable" film, that one could discuss and analyze and try to figure out - but that seems to be its whole purpose, to be enigmatic and elusive, and it essentially comes off as a film professor's experiment, not as a work of art or a work of entertainment. Briefly, this short (80-minute) movie opens with a voice-over narrator telling us he's arrived for a few days in a city (Seoul) where he hopes to meet up with an old friend. He tries to reach the friend by cell, no answer. Suddenly, a young woman - one of his film students apparently - sees him, is surprised to run into him in Seoul, and they have a very awkward conversation in which she is clearly in awe of him; she's going for coffee with friends but, instead of joining her, he decides just to walk around the cit with his little backpack. This behavior seems odd, but we, or at least I, wrote it off as perhaps a cultural difference between the U.S. and South Korea - but eventually we learn otherwise, as scene after scene involves odd behavior, and we figure it's either the oddity of this filmmaker or the intentional desire to depict abnormal behavior that is nonrepresentational. Among scenes: three film students recognize the director/narraator, he joins them for drinks, he takes them by cab to some other city neighborhood, then runs away from them screaming, telling them to stop "copying" him; he goes to an old girlfriend's apartment, bursts into fake sobbing, the have groping sex, and in the morning he leaves and they say they love each other but will never communicate again. And it goes on. Okay, there may be some deeper meaning to these mashups, for example, this may be a South Korean version of 8 1/2, the torment of a frustrated filmmaker or artist. Or, the "He" may be a Christ figure, returned to earth (to Seoul) and misunderstood by all: some are in love with him but will not communicate with him; some recognize him and "copy" him but in foolish ways, and so forth. As noted, there could be a lot of "meaning" in this film but it's so heavy-handed an awkward in its narration that it keeps us unengaged rather than open to its message, whatever that may be.

Flight soars, then sputters - but Denzel is awesome

"Flight" is pretty exciting right from takeoff, and in some ways the best part of the movie is the first "act" of about 30 minutes, the airplane losing control and the pilot, Denzel Washington, bringing it safely to ground in a field with a lot of injuries but with few lost lives - terrifically tense moments in the cockpit and he calmly figures out how to control the plane while his co-pilot more or less freaks. It would be hard to pick the movie up from there, but the rest of this very long movie is admirable if not terribly original - a good if familiar story, along fairly predictable lines, of Denzel's addiction (mostly alcohol, but also cocaine), his cover-up, and his eventual recovery, inspired by a recovering drug addict whom he meets and, sort of, falls in love with and, ultimately, by his own moral code: the NTSB investigation at the end, when Denzel is faced with a Hobson's choice of whether to besmirch the posthumous reputation of one of the victims of the crash or to confess his own complicity, is a powerful moment and an important turning point - but very late in the film. What mostly makes the film is Denzel - in a terrific performance that covers a vast range of emotions and behaviors and should win him a Best Actor Oscar I would think (though I don't know what else is out there). I do wonder how on earth or why on earth the producer was cleared to show Denzel drinking a Budweiser while driving.

Real Housewives for the PBS crowd: Queen of Versailles

As M pointed out, "The Queen of Versailles," a documentary about the Siegel family, David and Jackie and their 8 children, is like Real Housewives for the PBS crowd. David S is/was the CEO and founder of the largest timeshare resort company in the world; Jackie is his trophy (3rd) wife, about 30 years younger than he, and mother to 7 of his brood of children. Documentary begins in about 2007, and obviously the filmmaker started out to document their lavish and ridiculous lifestyle - they are in the process of building a new house called Versailles and modeled after same that will be the largest single-family house in America. In 2008, the project took an unexpected turn, as the market crash basically wiped out all of Siegel's capital and spun his company toward bankruptcy. The Siegels have no ready cash, and it changes their style of living in some ways, but not in all ways, as Jackie in particular is completely unable or unwilling to relinquish many of her luxuries. So is the film any good? Yes, in its lurid way: the Siegels are not entirely evil people: David is a rather dull business guy who took huge gambles on a new industry, made a fortune, but was too stupid to diversify or protect his assets and lost it all. Jackie S. is a little smarter than you might expect, but basically she's a child - she acts like one of her kids, and she is totally incapable of running any element of her life, or theirs, without a legion of helpers. Their taste is horrendous in every way you can imagine - starting with their bizarre desire to model their house on Versailles without any awareness of the irony. Their chairs look like thrones, they have hideous statuary everywhere, way more of everything than anyone would need - but as their fortunes fall they don't even have the sense to pick up the dog shit on their carpets. Most significant, David S. - a huge backer of GW Bush (he claims to have been instrumental in getting Bush "elected" though he won't discuss how because it may have been illegal) - has no interests outside of work and his charitable donations seem to consist of checks to the Miss America fund, mainly so that they can host an annual gala at their house with all the contestants, who must painfully put up with David's flirting (Jackie was a beauty "queen" once upon a time - and he keeps "joking" about trading her in for 2 20-year-olds). When the Siegels lose their fortune, David (and to a lesser extent Jackie) blame the "banks" and the "bankers" - who are behaving in exactly the same ruthless, unconscionable way the Siegels did and do: the bankers are trying to squeeze every dollar out of him, good old capitalism, without interference of the government or regulators, just as he and his republican pals want it to be: we do see some great scenes of the sales for at one of the timeshares (led by his oldest son) at work bilking poor people out of their meager funds. What goes around comes around, dude! Some other great scenes in the movie: Jackie shopping for xmas (glad that David appears to be a nonobservant Jew, who wants him) at walmart, filling multiple carts with stuff they can't afford and not a single thoughtful present, just junk, box after box; Jackie renting a Hertz car for the first time. Watch it and weep.

Possibly the best movie of the year: Argo

Let me join the chorus in praise of "Argo," surely one of the best if not the best movie of the year, a totally and improbably captivating story. I must have underestimated Ben Affleck - this movie shows he has great directorial talent, so more power to him and keep 'em coming. Argo is improbable because you'd think it would be completely impossible to combine a razor's edge tension story about the taking American hostages in Iran with a Hollywood satire, but Affleck brings off both elements and weaves the strands together perfectly. In short (spoilers here), the story involves an effort by the CIA to free a group of 6 Americans who escaped from the U.S. embassy and found temporary sanctuary in the Canadian embassy - if the Iranians knew that the Canadians were sheltering the 6, all would be executed, including some of the Canadians. Many absolutely exciting and well-placed scenes build up this drama, including the action of the taking of the embassy, largely seen from inside the walls, as well as the incredible tension of the six Americans living in relative comfort in the Canadian embassy while constantly fearing for their lives. The CIA considers several ridiculous plans for extirpating the Americans and then settle on one that seems at first the most ridiculous of all: they set up a fake film production company and send an undercover agent who claims to be scouting locations for a sci-fi film (called Argo); they get some fake papers and pretend the 6 Americans are part of the crew. This fake company leads to some terrific comic scenes in LA, with John Goodman and Alan Arkin buying a crap screenplay and pretending to greenlight the project - obvious echos of The Producers, but all this against the real-life tension of the hostages in fear of their lives. Affleck is the undercover agent, pretending to be an associate producer. Probably the best scene in the whole movie, of many great ones, is the fake location-scouting excursion, when Affleck takes them to the Tehran bazaar, and they get assaulted by an enraged shopkeeper. The final scenes at the Tehran airport, as authorities question the authenticity of the documents and as they use their fake storyboards to persuade the revolutionary guard thugs that they're truly making a movie is excellent - there's no reason any sane person would make a movie in Iran at that time, but the guards are so enamored with the very idea of a movie that they buy it. So do we - and final fillip is that the the story, as wild and improbable as it is, is based on true events, probably pretty closely. The facts were kept secret until I think 1997; the closing credits show us images of the real hostages, all of whom returned to work in the foreign service.

Why Hitchcock fans should avoid watching The Girl

Hitchcock fans should probably not see the HBO film "The Girl" because it will forever tarnish and besmirch your sense of the director and his accomplishments, but aren't we all Hitchcock fans? Watch it and beware. There's no doubt that Hitchcock was by by no means an actor's director - I'm sure he's written, in a sly and dry manner, that actors were for him essentially props, part of the look of the film. He had his films sketched out shot by shot, and then he arranged the actor in the frame and shot his dailies. That is his own exaggeration of course, but there's a lot of truth - his films to seem cold and inhuman, even cruel at times, and he's very uninterested in developing relationships between characters or depths within characters - we accept his films for their greatness, but we don't warm up to them. The Girl is about H's relationship with Tippi Hedren and The Girl is about their work together on The Birds and Marnie: H. starts off as a debonair and witty old Englishman who casts Hedren and charms her and invites her into his home, meeting Mrs. H, whom he presents as his near-equal partner in casting and direction. But gradually he comes on to her more directly and grotesquely; when she pushes him away, he takes out his anger on her during the filming, eventually literally torturing her through more than 60 takes of scene in which she's attacked by live birds. On one level, it shows his dedication to getting the perfect shot (as well as his cruelty and indifference toward actors - Bresson known for the same ruthlessness, BTW), and on another - less explored by cineastes - it shows his pettiness and perversion: he's not looking for the perfect shot, in fact he's endangering his whole project by torturing his star for personal vengeance. H has many vulgar and nasty outbursts, as well as some drunken scenes of self-pity in which he laments his homeliness (in an industry surrounded by the glamorous) - and we see this dark side of H., compared with the public avuncular and witty British image that he so carefully crafted. It all seems to make sense, but I don't know - perhaps the film (and the book on which is it's based) took many liberties with the known facts. H's work still stands, but this film - rightly or wrongly - has made the pedestal a lot more wobbly.

A movie that blasts all thought away

Sorry, I didn't want the walls to be knocked down by the score and the sound fx of "The Dark Knight Rises" so I turned down the volume and I may have missed some of the Shakespearean dialogue and the Aristotelian wisdom that may have passed between Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway, or between Christian and butler Alfred/Michael Caine - but I still got enough from the movie - who wouldn't? The Nolans' Dark Knight Rises is what it is: the polar opposite of the kind of low-key low-budget no-stars on location interior indie social drama or foreign psychodrama that I usually watch. The characters are, uh, cartoons - and the plot is idiotic, requiring more suspension (of disbelief) than the Verrazzano Bridge - and yet, hey, it's a DC Comic. It's just plain entertainment, pure and simple, and you know what on it's own terms it's a damn good movie. In a way, it's what American cinema does and always has done best: tremendous effects, edge-of-the-seat chases and predicaments, high, brassy, overdone, too big, too long, way too loud - but you totally get your money's worth, with too many great scenes to tabulate: the plane hijacking at the outset, the imploding city (especially at the football stadium, the endless motorcycle chase, the Wall Street heist, the climb out of the dungeon, the dead-man's-float through the sewers, and others. No one will ever believe Bale is a tough guy or Hathaway's a bone-breaker, but that's part of the fun of it. The villain, Bane, is suitably creepy and menacing, talking through that insect-like proboscis he's got affixed to his face (a page from Blue Velvet, magnified a thousand-fold). When I step back for a moment from the loud entertainment, a few things do bother me: what's with the total desexualization of Caine? Can't the butler have a life, too? And what's with the attacks on Wall Street and on the wealthy dwellers of Gotham/Manhattan, with its French Revolution-like trials and executions? Is there a hidden message that the Army of Shadows, or whatever it's called, that wants to destroy civilization, is the rising "47 percent," clamoring for "class warfare"? Is this movie on some level the revenge, or the fantasy revenge, of the Romney Republicans? I know that's a subliminal message at best (or worst), but it's something I couldn't help think about in the midst of the mind-numbing blasts of sound in this movie that's really meant to blast all thought away.

Baseball's dirty little secret

Though mostly of interest to baseball fans, the documentary film "Ballplayer: Pelotero" is an excellent film that shows us an exploitative culture about which U.S. fans see and no little to nothing, till now (there was also a feature film on this topic, can't recall the title, that was great - showing the long odds of a Dominican player making it in the MLB). Ballplayer is a look at the development of players in the DR, particularly San Pedro de Macaras, the center of the baseball "industry" in the DR. The narrative notes that an amazing 20 percent of MLB players are from the DR, including numerous HOF members and potential members. The feature film noted above focused on one player going through the process, getting drafted for a modest bonus, and then being completely overwhelmed by the adjustment to life in small, midwest American Minor League towns. This film is entirely in the DR and focuses not on the typical player but on two exceptions: the two top shortstop prospects in the 2008 season. Players cannot be signed until they are 16, and first day of potential signing is July 2, so this creates a "class" of players who will be 16 on that date - the scouts follow them closely when they're 15 and build up to that signing date. It's very clear that the player's signing value drops quickly after that date and a 17 year old is far less valuable than a 16 year old - so there's huge pressure to sign on 7-2. Film also shows the incredible hard work these guys go through, with their trainer - who gets up to 35 percent of the signing bonus - and sometimes with an agent. Also shows the incredible poverty of the families, living in horrible, crowded housing - and the anticipation (and exploitation) as they hope and wait for bonus signings that can be in the millions. The two players each show hugely different aspects of exploitation, each disturbing in a different way. The no. 1 prospect is a kid named Juan Miguel Sano (will his nickname inevitably be "Just"?), 15, seems to be very goofy and immature. Suddenly we start to see stories in the press suggesting that Sano may be older than 15,that they may have faked a birth certificate of something. The Pirate scout mentions this in conversations that the filmmaker captures. MLB begins an investigation, and Sano rightly worries that he can't sign while under investigation. The Pirate scout talks to his family (captured on hidden videocamera) and says that no one else will want Sano while the investigation is under way, but he's willing to sign him for the Pirates - and he warns that if he doesn't sign now, nobody will take him. Ultimately, Sano is cleared and signs with the Twins (and is still their top prospect) - it's obvious that the Pirates scout created the rumor (the kid does totally look and act 15) in order to scare the kid and his family and get him cheap. We see Sano driving around in a huge SUV and the family now in a vast, rather hideous house. The other kid, whose name I don't remember, also becomes the subject of an investigation and in fact the family did fake his age - he's 17 (and looks it) - ultimately signs for much less than they'd though, and his trainer is furious - actually brings a lawsuit against the kid and his family, as he'd been misled all along and calls the kid a complete liar, which he seems to be. He's now a prospect with the Astros. All in all, it'll make you think differently about the players we follow and cheer for - the DR system is just as exploitative as steroids or as any weird system like lotteries and casinos that holds forth for many impoverished the illusion of sudden wealth.