Smell of Rice Cooking

Branded to Kill (1967) - Suzuki




A human blowfish Hanada (Jo Shishido) is a contract killer. Despite his irregularities- he has a fetishistic tendency to the smell of cooking rice, he is damn good at his job. But when he fails an assassination job, hired by butterfly collecting femme fatale Masako, he gets hounded by the invisible 'guild' and the ranked No.1 killer (Koji Nanbara).

This is a wild ride. Visually inventive, ultra modern sets and goofy humor, the Seijun Suzuki's gangster flick plays out like the adult, perverted combo version of Michel Gondry and Wong Kar Wai.

Brooklyn Flea at Dusk

OWS in Halloween Parade 2011

Prague Spring

Birds, Orphans and Fools/Vtackovia, Siroty a Blazni (1969) - Jakubisko This allegorical tale of Czechoslovakia, post Prague Spring and following Warsaw Pact invasion, is all colors, beautiful decay, New Wave, Falstaff, concentration camp references, bizarre love triangle a la Jules et Jim, gaggle of children and...birds. Yorick and Andrej are manic fools horsing around war torn Bratislava.They pick up Martha, a Jewish waif who dons a Jean Seberg haircut. Martha goes back and forth between wise-ass Yorick and virginal Andrej until Yorick goes to jail for a year. Then the tragedy ensues as the brief narration in the beginning sequence predicts. There is definitely method in all the chaos. Birds, Ophans... is a maddeningly intoxicating cinematic experience.

The Abyss Gazes Back

Into the Abyss (2011) - Herzog

Herzog continues his Americana with Into the Abyss, a documentary about Death Row. It is perhaps the most somber Herzog film in years. There have been similar death penalty issue films like Errol Morris's Thin Blue Line, and more recently Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost docs, which actually helped to exonerate their subjects (or at least to have them out of jail). But Herzog rather concentrates on the impact of violence that is felt on both sides of the crime. He doesn't overtly state the institutional killing is wrong. But he certainly makes us think about it with a skillfully balanced filmmaking.

Stripped away is Herzog's usual droll narration. Mostly comprised of interviews and crime scene videos, the film briskly moves on one scene to another. Michael Perry and Jason Burkett shot and killed three people while stealing a sports car in 2002. A senseless crime committed by a couple of 19 year olds. Perry was sentenced to death, and Burkett life imprisonment. In an interview with Perry, Herzog tells his subject upfront that he respects him as a human being and feels sorry for him that he has to die, but that doesn't mean he has to like him. Youthful and even jovial, 8 days before his execution, Perry tells Herzog his state of mind as a condemned man. "I'm going home or home either way." He cites 'hanging with the wrong crowd' as the root of the problem. It is evident in the interviews with friends and relatives of both perpetrators and victims, that in their lives there was a systematic pattern for unending violence, even in the suburbs of the American South: large numbers of family incarcerated, poverty, drugs, theft and felony. Serving a 40-year sentence for multiple felony charges, Burkett's father tells Herzog that he knew he saved his son's life when he saw two ladies in the jury crying after his tearful "Don't kill my son. He never had a chance," testimony during his son's sentencing. He says his most shameful moment came when he and his two sons (Jason's older brother is also in prison) got a chance to have meals together in the prison yard.

There are definitely Herzogian moments: the red Camaro, the source of the three lives lost, still sits in a police impound. The sheriff explains why they had to move the car to another spot: the tree grew from underneath the car and came through the floorboard. Herzog also gets in some memorable lines, "Describe your encounter with a squirrel," and "Would Jesus be for the capital punishment?" over the course of the film. Then there is Mellyssa who is carrying Jason's baby. They fell in love when she worked as a legal assistant on Jason's case. She is coy about how she has become pregnant.

Executions have an emotional impact on those who have to carry out the sentence as well. Herzog interviews a Texas man who had a breakdown after assisting in his 125th execution. Now, he opposes the capital punishment. A death row chaplain starts sobbing when he is asked about the last rites he performs for the inmates. "I can't stop the process, I wish I could." One must think of the recent execution of Troy Davis, a man whose trial was plagued by racial bias and police manipulation of witnesses. One of the arguments in the attempt to commute his death sentence was the potential psychological impact of forcing officers to perform an execution on a man whose guilt had not been established beyond a reasonable doubt. Lisa Stotler-Balloun, who lost her mother and brother to the crime, went to see the execution of Perry. Even though Perry's death can't bring her family back, she felt somewhat of a relief afterword. But when asked if the life sentence for the murderer would've satisfied her, she says yes.

Its generic title could be applied to any number of Herzog films. But with no traces of cynicism or sly wit, Into the Abyss is a particularly straightforward documentary. Thoroughly inquisitive and contemplative, Herzog seems to be saying enough is enough.


Into the Abyss made its debut at TIFF, Telluride Film Fest in September, it is an opening night film at Doc NYC on Nov.2 and opens in theaters Nov. 11 via IFC Films.

Don't Tell Your Dreams to Anybody

Bal (2010) - Kaplanoğlu







Remote mountain village in Turkey is perhaps the biggest star in Bal (Honey), Semih Kaplanoğlu's last installment of the trilogy that includes Egg and Milk. Sunlight and silhouette dominate. It tells a very simple story of Yusuf, an 8-year old boy. He worships his beekeeper father, has some difficulties in reading, hates milk.... It's a bad bee season. So his father goes out of town to find a better spot to plant a new beehive. A couple of days pass and the father doesn't come back and things become uneasy for him and his mother.

There are many small beautiful moments with Yusuf and his father. One breathtaking dreamlike sequence takes place indoors: it's a slow tracking shot following Yusuf through the house that strongly resembles the indoor farm sequence in Tarkovsky's Mirror. Overall, In mood and tone, Bal has more common with The Spirit of the Beehive. A beautiful film.

In Love with the Ghost

Norwegian Wood (2010) - Tran






Nowegian Wood has been probably the most anticipated film for me since the announcement of its adaptation (3-4 years ago) of Haruki Murakami's heartbreaking book on the first love with the Vietnamese auteur Tran Anh Hung (Scent of Green Papaya, Cyclo) at the helm. For those who've read the book, the film is a great companion piece: with picture perfect framing, fluid camera movement, light and weather sensitive anamorphic cinematography (by In the Mood for Love cinematographer Lee Ping Bin). Tran, known for his sensual imagery, makes every scene and nuance count, gets every periodical detail right.

As Naoko, the girl who's in love with the ghost, Rinko Kikuchi is a perfect match. Her always searching, wide eyes pierce right through your heart. Kenichi Matsuyama possesses Toru Watanabe's innate goodness and naivete but doesn't quite pull off the wise nonchalance of the usual Murakami protagonist.

2 hour runtime doesn't really do justice as the film breezes through. The film feels empty behind all the pretty pictures, not as affecting as the book. Not a huge letdown but can't help being disappointed.

Mad Love

L'Amour Braque (1985) - Zulawski



Inspired by Dostoevsky's The Idiot, the films tells the story of Léon (Francis Huster), an idiot just released from a mental hospital in Hungary. He befriends with the wild gang of bank robbers, headed by Micky (Tchéky Karyo) on the train to Paris. After getting back Micky's girl Mary (luminous young Sophie Marceau) from the other rival factions, they proceed to hunt down the powerful Venin brothers who wronged Mary's mother. Léon hopelessly falls for Mary and she does a see-sawing act between two men, driving everyone involved crazy.

L'Amour Braque is just an amazing movie experience. Zulawski's manic energy has no comparison. The film is hard to follow since its dialog is totally nonsensical. But one grandiose, emotionally and physically bare, violent scenes after another, you get into the groove of things. You get to feel the film first, as you try to digest what it all means. Chaos is methodology and it's an amazing feat. His examination of Love and animal instinct is embodied by Sophie Marceau. She eats up the screen. Karyo and Huster do their best, but the film definitely belongs to Marceau. You can't take your eyes off of her when she's on screen.

Glimpse

Marseille (2004) - Schanelec

Angela Schanelec's Marseille is an enigma. With daring shifts, jarring jump cuts and elliptical structure, the film begs for your full attention. It starts out with a young German woman, Sophie, arriving in Marseille. First one third of the film is with Sophie. She is sitting in a passenger's side of a car driven by a French woman (named Zelda, we learn later on) who is swapping her apartment with Sophie's. While in Marseille, Sophie doesn't do much. She photographs random streets, meets a man who rents her a car, gets insulted by a rude friend of the man. We don't get to really know her. She seems to be a nice young woman, if not somewhat plain and living an uneventful life. Then we are back in Germany. There are Ivan the photographer who Sophie may or may not be in love with, Hanna, a stage actress/the wife of Ivan and their young son. We get to know them, well not really. But we can tell Hanna is not really happy. Then there is a stage play where Hanna has a small part.

It takes time to understand what Schanelec is up to with the film. We see the play three times- the camera slowly pans and we get to see only the parts of the play at a time. Hanna comes in to the frame and exits in different intervals. Then there is Ivan taking photographs of random factory women in profile. Some of them are chattier than others. Again, we see and hear only the glimpse of their lives. Schanelec sketches out these moments. There are a lot that are not shown nor explained. Sophie decides to go back to Marseille, something bad happens as soon as she arrives and we don't get to see what happens of course.

There are people we see in the streets and wonder why they are in their particular states. Sometimes we imagine their back story. What we see in front of us is not the full picture and often deceptive. Obviously it is impossible to get to know someone in one hour and thirty minutes. Schanelec understands that. Marseille can be interpreted as a much ado about nothing and that Schanelec's approach is cold and detached. I find it certainly a challenging, yet quite invigorating movie watching experience.

High Tension

Amer (2009) - Cattet/Forzani




A grand homage to 70's Giallo, Amer strips away excessive gore, plot (which isn't saying much for the genre), and much of the dialog. What's left is mad style and amazing build up of sexual tensions. A total eye candy bordering experimental.

The world of Amer is always sizzling. It tells the three stages of life of Ana. It begins with Ana as a young girl, haunted by an old housekeeper who could be a witch. Then we jump to Ana as a sexy teen. Here, an ordinary walk to a local hair salon/grocery store with her sexually competitive mother becomes a heart pounding, sexually charged chase. The latter part concerns grown up Ana, where the limo ride becomes so tense, her dress rips at the seams. With Argento color palette and close-up/extreme close-up staccato edits, the film seduces you and never let you go. One of the rare cinematic treats in recent years.