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sleeplessinnz_99
Reviews
Xiao bai wu jin ji (2000)
poetic
this film is vivian chang's first film on the silver screen, if i am not mistaken.
a very concise film i'd say, leaving room for all sorts of possibilities for interpretation from the audience.
three stories consist in this film: one of a 5-year-old girl, one of a teenager, and still another of a 30 something woman involved in an affair with a married man. without providing a definite answer whether the three leading actresses are playing the same person in different stages of life, the movie instead hovers on several consistent themes that keep on emerging in all the stories. for example, the image of drops of blood on the clothes, in the shape of maroon flowers.
a film that is concise and short. almost as good as a poem.
Memento (2000)
sly, sly, sly
memento to me is a very sly noir.
guy pearce is even more gorgeous than ever! i think he is now thinner and tanner... uh, it's not the point.
it's sly because it begins from the end, then moves backward to the middle, but never quite to its beginning. as a viewer, i find it imperative to trace back each layer of newly-formed memories in the sequence of presentation. therefore audience has to be clever enough to do the writerly text. whereas all the other commercial films this summer seem to be trying to make audience's brain stop ticking.
what impresses me, as a result, is that this moive invites us to follow up and do our own creation of memory (an action of forging ahead) while moving backward in plots.
Sexy Beast (2000)
amazingly beautiful editing
the cinematography of this film is awesome. the editing is not terribly fast as if to make the viewer rush to catch up.
the scene of the boulder is hilarious.
and gal is this giant baby clinging to its bottle when don the preschool kid comes along nagging to get his way. it's not so much of a gangster thing but a sarcastic comparison to the interrelationship among characters. very enjoyable and entertaining.
America's Sweethearts (2001)
the mattress and the butter
what do you expect from hollywood commercial films? all-star casts and endless lies. in the 'america's sweethearts', we have big stars (julia roberts, catherine zeta-jones, billy crystal and john cusack), and an over-sweetened love story-- almost as good as lies. but that's what you always get from a movie like this, don't you?
i think it's exactly what people have to tell themselves b4 seeing it.
the movie has its moments that strikes me as impressive.
it is when kiki drags the mattress near her, saying "weird and good", and later on begins her 'breakfast buffet' as her weight dropped by 60 solid pounds (probably also means a life without butter for a long, long time).
these are scenes that reflect people's true life. these are the moments i find worthy of much more attention than the storyline.
of course, for a character as billy crystal to produce and co-write a script like this, he seems to bring up an issue on 'how we view the celebrities on screens'. come to think of it, movie stars are simply a person who earns money by idolizing himself or herself. it's like commodify a person in order to make great profit. but doesn't that lead us to realize that the public is driven by fetishism to such an extent that it's already a part of our life?
anyway, there are the funny scenes that amuses me very much. and there are also these little things that make me think it's a bit more than the usual hollywood films.