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deng1506
Reviews
Mysterious Skin (2004)
Mysterious Spin
I had no preconceptions going into this movie, was thoroughly bored out of my mind coming out, and logged onto IMDb hoping to be vindicated with a rating below the five point range. Boy was I in for a shock. No doubt, people probably just felt this merited a high score because it was "unflinching" in its depiction of a "difficult" and "harrowing" subject. I can tell you for a fact that this is one movie that is more than deserving of Eric Cartman's scorn; it is actually worse than gay cowboys eating pudding. It is not that I believe certain subject matter such as child rape or homosexuality is taboo. It was just the way the whole arc of the narrative veered wildly from Wonder Years (albeit a dysfunctional one) to X-Files to Last Exit to Brooklyn with no core element tying these discordant styles together. And that's not the end of it. The shots seemed as if they had been framed by a sixty-year old trying to be young and hip; the colors were beyond garish; and, of course, there was the obligatory young-man-running-through-the-streets-in-existential-despair scene. There was the corny dialogue which demanded the actors to chew the scenery if only to prevent them from throwing up. My first main guffaw came when a longtime friend of Neil (the main character) warns a new gay kid in town not to fall in love with him since, "Where normal people have a heart, Neil McCormick has a bottomless black hole." Unfortunately, only emo-band lead singers write such dialogue; and the only actor who could have survived a description like that was Peter Sellers. Gordon-Levitt obviously never comes off as an astronomical terror, but rather as a self-involved white dwarf. The chapter that put a capper on this all is when Neil gets beaten by and is anally raped by a John for the first time in his life. So right now, the director expects me to believe that after ten years of turning tricks for middle-aged men, he has never once had it up his rectum, that he has never once had a violent encounter with a John (in Kansas of all places), and that the remorse from the experience is going to make him apologize to his victim of ten-years' past. Golly, if I'd known the gay John community in Kansas were so nice, I wouldn't have laughed at Kansas all these years. And while I understand that it might hurt if you're hit with a plastic shampoo bottle, can you actually black out if you're hit more than 5 times? This is one for the Myth Busters.
The only reason I stuck around long enough to see the end credits roll was to check if the two protagonists were going to kill each other. To my disappointment, they did not.
There are a few pluses in the movie which saved it from being given a negative score. The title credits are very pretty. It is also very long. But in all seriousness, Billy Drago as a John with skin ailments is beyond words. He alone actually managed to portray something far greater than the sum of his dialogue. In his brief time on screen, I felt pathos; and though it has been required of all great tragedy since the Ancient Greeks, Araki apparently forgot to read that section in his "Directing Movies for Dummies".
Hae anseon (2002)
It might work as a military documentary
Perhaps the reason why this movie is getting such a bad rap is mainly a fault of its well-meaning, but still incoherent style and narrative structure. I have not read any articles on this movie or interviews with the director to know what his overt intention was, but in the end I think the movie falls short of its mark due to Kim's perennial fixation on obsession, whether it was his intention to delve into this subject matter or not. On most levels, obsession is a largely private affair, and any exegesis of obsession enmeshed within the loaded geopolitical situation that is now Korea would require a broader vision and canvas matched with a technical command of story telling than any that Kim has been able to provide here or elsewhere. However, one thing that I must praise Kim for is the reality with which he portrays military life in South Korea. It is, in my view, the grittiest, down-to-other depiction on the silver-screen of life as a grunt doing mandatory military service in Korea. I should know, since I've done my two years' service, as no doubt Kim also has. The situation might be unreal (a loose-cannon grunt suddenly acquiring the killing skills of Jason Bourne) but the military's reaction to it certainly wasn't. The ineptitude of the commanders to stop the problem, the fear of the soldiers and the conflict it breeds within, and, most important of all, the corporal punishment that gets amplified as it spreads down the chain of command.
So here's my recommendation: if you want a well thought out movie which pits issues of personal obsession against major geopolitical themes of our day, this movie is not for you. If, however, you want to see a curiosity piece about how troglodytic an existence military conscripts lead in South Korea, then you've come to the right place.
Helen of Troy (2003)
Almost better than "Hercules in New York"
I just loved this movie. I thought it was almost as good as "Hercules in New York" but lacked in the ultimate hero department. See, my only carp is that, if they had someone like the Governator playing Achilles and had someone like Mel Blanc to voice him, it would have been a much better film.
Overall, a wonderful production. Especially Helen as an anemic who prances around with bra-less breasts bouncing (come to think of it, can anemics have breasts?).
I'm giving it a one out of one.