Les Amours Imaginaires

I know the French know how to make movies. Amelie is a classic. A Very Long Engagement was another dope one. And just last year, Le Dîner de Cons was remade and repackaged by Hollywood starring Steve Carel and Zach Galifianakis (I liked the French version better.)

I had high hopes for Heartbeats, originally titled Les Amours Imaginaires. I was disappointed. The movie is stylish, but shallow.

This is the story of three teenagers. The setting is Montreal, Canada. Marie (Monia Chokri) and Francis (Xavier Dolan) are hip outcasts and best friends. Marie’s style icon is Audrey Hepburn while Francis wants to be James Dean. They smoke non-stop, scowl at parties, and engage in meaningless sex. They are both listless.

That changes when they notice Nicolas (Niels Schneider.) He is handsome, confident, charming, and more alive than either of them. Marie and Francis become fixated. The more they want Nicolas, the closer they get to destroying each other.

Saturday Night Live produced a similar story a couple of weeks ago with the recurring skit, “Les Jeunes de Paris.” The satire characterizes French kids by placing them in fashionable clothes, having them make out with each other, slap each other, and dance around. This mirrors the basic premise of Heartbeats.

A better coming-of-age love triangle movie would be Y Tu Mama Tambien, the 2001 Mexican film starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna.

The Dreamers, produced in 2003, is another example of a movie exploring similar themes, but doing it a lot better.

Half of Heartbeats is made up of slow motion sequences. Slow motion walking, slow motion smoking, slow motion lovemaking. Enough with the slow motion. The music playing over the scenes sounds Euro and retro and cool. But enough is enough.

I give the movie a D-. Please don’t think that this is representative of French films or foreign films in general.

The last scene in Heartbeats is interesting because it shows the characters one year after the major events in the story. They have changed, but only superficially, trading their retro clothes for 1980’s disco outfits. This hints at the disposable nature of their style, their relationships, and their lives.

Who Wants To Join My Hood To Coast Team?

Hood to Coast is the feature-length documentary story of the largest relay race in the world, held annually near Portland, Oregon. The race features 1,000 teams following a 197-mile course, starting at Mount Hood and finishing at the Pacific Ocean.

The 197-mile race is divided into 36 stages and takes place over 36 grueling hours. A hand-off is required after each stage and every runner on each twelve-person team is responsible for three stages. Over the course of the race the teams descend 6,000 feet from mountain to coast.

The film follows four teams, from the veteran racers to the tubby rookies.

The team aspect of the race makes it very unique, transforming the usually solitary sport of running into an extreme bonding experience.

I want to start a team right now. I could run three stages next week no problem. I don’t think I could do much better than a 9 minute mile pace, though. My team would be called Team Thug Life. You already know, man, my van would be the smoked out one with all the ballers inside, haha.

The film also explores the world of the aging runner, exemplified by Heart n Sole’s Kathy. A veteran of 75 marathons, Kathy is competing a year after a serious collapse mid-course. She was revived by fast responders, and after triple bypass surgery, she is back to take on the race that almost took her life.

How do you tell an old runner to stop? Kathy’s determination is almost scary. Her doctor explains it best, suggesting that Kathy refuses to listen to her body when it is in pain.

The film’s aerial shots are beautiful, following the road’s evolution through mountain forests, to the countryside, to city intersections and finally ending at the beach. There are also night sequences featuring dusty gravel roads and runners wearing forehead lights.

The cameras also provide a very close, intimate view of each team. Team R. Bowe’s motivation for running is the most heartbreaking. The group is made up of friends and family honoring the memory of deceased runner, Ryan Bowe, who died tragically at the age of 30.

I thought the camera was too close during the scene when Ryan’s brother finishes his last stage in the race and is overcome by emotion. You can hear a field director ask him to describe his feelings. His face is full of tears. I would have respected the man’s privacy, having already taken so much from his story. This was an awkward moment in an otherwise compelling section.

Hood to Coast is a great theater experience. I give it an A-. For a kid raised and stuck in Florida, it provides an amazing view of the Pacific Northwest. Each runner represents a different set of motivations and experiences that makes for a very diverse and complete story. The cinematography and editing is also excellent.

Hood to Coast 2012. I’m down. Who else wants to step up?

It's the Pain and the Sex Disguised as Innocence

People are freaks man, getting all kinds of gully in the bedroom. Thankfully, most like to get freaky in private. Other people like to put on shows.

Monogamy explores those hidden desires. It follows a professional photographer named Theo (Chris Messina,) as he embarks on a strange new assignment.

See, he makes his living mostly from weddings. The movie is pretty realistic in depicting it as the soul-sucking job that it must be. I couldn’t do it, arranging demanding brides and drunk family members into generic poses, the same scenario week after week.

So Theo has a side hustle. People pay him to shoot candid photographs from a distance, without being spotted. They give him a time and place, and he sets up like a sniper, stalks them, shoots them and sends them the prints. This makes for more challenging, more honest photography.

The shots get even more interesting when he is contracted by a mysterious blonde with a penchant for exhibitionism. On his first shoot he documents her 9 am park bench climax. Eventually, Theo follows her down dark alleys where she meets strange men for sex. He obsesses over her pictures, cropping them close so that he can make out her jewelry and tattoos.

Soon Theo begins noticing the sharp contrast between the blonde and his own fiancé, played by Parks and Recreation’s Rashida Jones. Jones is sweet and understanding as Nat, but she lacks the uncontrollable passion that drives the mysterious blonde. Now Theo must confront his own desires, and decide on what it means to be a man in a relationship.

The premise of the movie is interesting and the writing very solid. I particularly liked how the story uses a small cut to Nat and her subsequent staph infection as a plot device in order to put distance between her and Theo. It reminds me of a similar plot turn that occurs in an excellent Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story, "The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow". The break-up scene towards the end of the movie is also rendered very realistic.

The film does have a number of glaring weaknesses, including Messina’s portrayal of Theo. The story relies heavily on Messina to demonstrate his character’s internal conflict. I found him less than convincing. I also would have liked more insight into Jones’ character. Instead she is depicted mostly as the suffering girlfriend.

The weakest aspect to the film is definitely the plot twist surrounding the blonde’s true circumstances. I know I saw it coming long before it was confirmed. It was also strangely ineffective as the motivation behind Theo’s final act epiphany. I would have left the whole idea on the cutting room floor.

I give Monogamy a C-. The premise is original and the themes explored are interesting. The acting is solid, if slightly off. There are moments where the writing is very clever, but unfortunately those moments are balanced out by a few subtle weaknesses in the story and characterization.

I would recommend the film mostly to young men and women in relationships. Sex dominates the minds of men. Some can control their desires, and some succumb to them, letting those desires warp them and leave them with nothing. Don’t let that be you.

Sunlight Shining Through My Window Lets Me Know That I'm Still Alive

My little sister works at a nursing home for the old and sick. She is the one that stays after a person’s loved ones go home. Most of us try not to think about those kinds of places. Most of us would rather not end up in those kinds of places at all.

We don’t want to smell death or handle the guilt thinking we’ve abandoned our grandparents to face it alone. We visit them out of obligation and wait anxiously to leave. Another Harvest Moon doesn’t allow for that separation. It deals exclusively with the life inside the facilities.

The story follows four old-timers, Frank (Ernest Borgnine,) June (Piper Laurie,) Ella (Anne Meara,) and Alice (Doris Roberts,) each with their own fears and ways of coping. Between shattered hips, dementia, cancer, and strokes, they have a lot to cope with.

Borgnine is brilliant as Frank, the former marine. You can see the restlessness and regret on his face, even as he delivers a monologue on the beauty of the sun shining through his window. He keeps his deceased wife’s nail clippers by his bed at all times to keep her on his mind. He also keeps a loaded gun from his youth for similar reasons, to keep the memory of his fellow soldiers alive.

War is just one recurring theme in the movie. Other themes include the importance of routine, the effects of memories, and the grown relationships between fathers and sons. I thought the lotto ticket scenes with Alice were especially well integrated into the film. I was really moved watching her sit in front of the television, full of faith and dreams for the prize money.

I have never wanted a fictional character to win so badly before. The writing is really tight and full of these little moments.

Alice also plays an important role in the film, as Frank’s ideological opposite. Where he struggles to deal with the pain he feels waking up each day, she faces everything with unflinching optimism. Each one of us will have to make the same choice one day, to either give up or keep fighting.

It is easy to say that I’ll keep fighting forever, my body hasn’t yet betrayed me, and I still have control over my memories. How much fight will I have in me immobilized in a bed, or lost in a fog forced to live in my past? I don’t know.

The film is bookended by effective and evocative opening and closing sequences featuring soft fade scene transitions and a pretty musical score.

Another Harvest Moon gets a strong B+. It is a sad movie, but it is honest and well done. Borgnine and Roberts especially stand out among the stellar ensemble cast.

I’m sorry for anyone currently suffering in a nursing home, either physically or emotionally. I wish we took better care of our grandparents as a society and I hope our children don’t forsake us.

Bread From the Holy Land

I would like to spend time in Israel someday out of respect to the holiness of the land and what it has represented to man throughout history, and also out of a sense of adventure. I admire people that live in the Middle East, Jew, Christian, and Muslim. That land requires a lot of faith and courage.

The Human Resources Manager tells the story of one man, living and working at the largest bakery in Jerusalem. He is unnamed, and known only by the roles that he plays, HR boss, father, and estranged husband. A suicide bombing takes place and one of his employees is killed. She is a foreigner, and her body had been lying in the morgue unclaimed for days.

When a journalist reports on the situation as a human rights abuse, it falls on the human resource manager to make good on the bakery’s behalf. This means tracking down the dead woman’s family, transporting the body, and realizing their wishes for it.

Most of the scenes in the film have very interesting backgrounds. The night drive around Jerusalem was cool, from the twinkling lights in the hills, to the random a-- police checkpoint along the way. The police men pull people over just to look inside their cars over there. Something to think about.

The second half of the movie has an army bunker and a loaned six-wheeled armored vehicle and the Romanian countryside as the background. That was pretty cool.

Something happened that was very unfortunate at my Monday screening of the film at the Living Room Theaters. In a scene where the protagonist is receiving instructions from his boss concerning burial arrangements, the subtitles go away. For about three minutes, I witnessed a conversation in Hebrew without translation. It wasn’t fun and I lost crucial information from the movie. It took me almost to the end to realize the setting had changed to Romania.

While I'm on the subject of subtitles, I have a problem with featuring three or more languages in one film without distinguishing which language was spoken in the subtitles. I would have liked brackets enclosing the language being spoken under the translations. It was hard to distinguish when the characters (most of whom spoke two or more languages in the film) understood each other without guidance. Sadly, I can’t tell the difference between Romanian and Hebrew.

I guess I have to blame the distributor, but I realize the limitations in distributing a film to a worldwide audience from outside of the Hollywood system (According to the end credits, this film was at least partially funded by the Israel Film Fund.)

The Human Resources Manager was Israel’s bid for best foreign film in this year’s Academy Awards. I give the film a B-. The locations are outstanding. The story is simple but full of quirky twists and the level of production was very high. I enjoyed it.

The Teenagers Explode

Kaboom is a weird movie. It is unconcerned with traditional cinematic storytelling. With a punk rock/post-modern energy, it deconstructs the average teenager film into some crazy, hypersexual, apocalyptic hallucination. The results are a lot less cool than they sound, and for all of the effort my mind was not blown.

Smith (Thomas Dekker) is a broody 18 year old college student experiencing a sexual awakening. Not burdened by shyness, Smith does it with both boys and girls. He has a lippy best friend named Stella (Haley Bennett) and a bimbo roommate named Thor (Chris Zylka.) They talk in pop-culture references, go to parties, and obsess about blowjobs and clit stimulation. Nothing too strange about that.

The weirdness begins in Smith’s dreams, but soon his dreams start bleeding into his real life. One night he thinks he witnesses a murder, only the perpetrators are men in black suits and animal masks. Smith follows the trail, doubting his own sanity, and encounters mysterious characters connected to a dangerous cult. The crazy doesn’t stop there. Oh no.

See Stella is dating a witch with supernatural powers, which would be a good thing if the girl wasn’t so clingy. Breaking up means piercing voodoo doll headaches and demonic possession. The psycho lesbian isn’t the only one with supernatural powers, and Smith must race to uncover the truth about the strangeness around him before the conspiracy threatens to destroy everyone he cares about.

I don’t think the connection has been made yet, but I noticed a lot of similarities between the cult depicted in the film and the infamous Family International cult founded in the 1960’s by sick f--- David Berg. Secrecy, extreme sexual freedom, the supernatural, prophecy, child abuse/abduction, end time theories and incest were all institutionalized by Berg and The Family.

Ricky Rodriguez was born into the cult, raised as the heir to Berg and idolized by all other members. Grown, he helped bring to light all of The Family’s abuses, and sadly, took his own life. His story was depicted in an MSNBC special and it really affected me.

If writer/director Gregg Araki purposefully wove a fictionalized version of The Family cult into Kaboom, he failed in providing the average viewer with a significant tell. Either way, I believe the real-life story is too important not to mention in this review.

Aside from the possibility of a meaningful analogy, the film offers little in the way of a cohesive, relatable story. Instead, it places all its bets on a distinct visual style and quirky teenage dialogue, my favorite line being, “Dude, it’s a vagina, not a bowl of spaghetti.”

The characters are always dressed in Skittle rainbow colors and washed by golden light in daytime and blue tones at night. There are also lots of hazy dream sequences and pointless transition effects between scenes. Visual effects are used liberally depicting supernatural powers, and are pretty cheesy in my opinion.

Donnie Darko pulled off a similar aesthetic and story back in 2001, but this film is no Donnie Darko.

I do think Kaboom was a worthwhile movie to make. It pushes the boundaries of traditional film making with distinctive writing and visuals. Unfortunately, it is mostly a case of style over substance. There were a few interesting moments, but I doubt most viewers will leave the theater happy. The term, “noble failure” comes to mind. I give Kaboom a D+.

Revolting. Ugly. Nauseating. Shameless.

I know about South Korea because I studied Tae Kwan Do back in the day when I was a little guy. I think I could still break brittle little pieces of wood using only the power of the entire weight of my body. The BBC knows more about South Korea than I do. It is currently the 13th largest economy in the world and growing.

The level of swag displayed in The Housemaid was on a level I have not seen in a long time. I was blown away with the lives of the rich South Koreans depicted in this film.

The protagonist is a working class girl (Jeon Do-yeon,) who is hired to work for a wealthy family. They live in a palace. The servants, wife and child, line up every morning to see the man of the house (Lee Jung-jae) off to work. He plays classical piano and drinks fine wine. The elegance of this man’s hair is surpassed only by his wardrobe. Swag.

The guy has everything anyone could ever want. His family is gorgeous, his wife is hot and puts out, and he is crazy rich. Why would he want to risk it all to play doctor with the nanny? Why not? This man was born getting everything he wants.

The sex scenes in this film are really stylish and intense. There is a really funny sequence that reminds me of a scene in American Psycho, where the rich dude drops a classic sex move. While receiving oral pleasure, he puts his hands up and starts flexing his biceps in front of a window. Hilarious.

Men are pathetic in that they can’t help but work out power issues in bed. I’m sorry that women have to be on the other side of that.

The plot in The Housemaid is very simple, as the working-class girl gets in way over her head. Park Ji-young provides a memorable performance as the evil mother-in-law. “With a rich husband, cheating is part of the package,” she says to her daughter. Soon after, she is plotting murder.

The climax takes the crazy to full Ron Artest Malice at the Palace levels. The final act of revenge is shocking, but definitely set up well by the story.

This movie works not because it has a complex plot, but because writer/director Im Sang-soo has great attention to detail. There is also worthwhile social commentary in the film, covering class divisions, sex and the modern family. I give The Housemaid an A-.