In Briefs

Here are a few brief thoughts on movies I've watched recently:

The Castle & Who Was Edgar Allan? (Michael Haneke, 1997 and 1984, respectively) – So they’re having a Michael Haneke retrospective at MoMA right now, and these are the two films I’ve caught so far. Sigh. Y’all know I love Haneke and do feel the need to fill in the gaps in his filmography that I have, but this has been a disillusioning slog so far. Neither is so terrible I feel as if I need to relinquish the title of Greatest Living Filmmaker that I’ve bestowed on Mr. Haneke, but neither is especially worth seeing again either. The Castle was the better of the two, but I think most of my minimal enjoyment came from seeing three of the main actors from Funny Games playing main parts here. Ulrich Mühe is always a welcome presence. It starts out very funny - which is really really saying something, when you consider a Haneke film's usual mood - but then... just sort of... keeps going... And it’s only been a week since I saw Edgar Allan and I already remember very little aside from the dull throb of tedium.

Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007) – Tang Wei and Tony Leung are really, really good, and the much-discussed sex scenes are everything you’ve heard them to be – “integral to the plot” doesn’t even begin to cover it. It’s just a shame the movie around all this is half-an-hour too long and occasionally arch and uninvolving. There are all sorts of good elements that never really fell into place – that opening mah-jong scene that I’ve heard a slew of critics say “crackles with tension” did anything but, at least for me, and there are several sequences where I knew I was supposed to feel invested but just… wasn’t. I must say the scene of protracted violence in the middle half was incredibly well done, though – besides the sex scenes, it was the only other real moment of the film where I felt the stakes involved.


Purple Noon (Rene Clement, 1960) – It was really difficult to watch this without constantly focusing on the differences between this version of Patricia Highsmith’s story and Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. In fact, at one point I imagined the movie that would’ve been if Alain Delon were playing Ripley and Jude Law played opposite him as Dickie Greenleaf and, well, I just sorta blacked out for awhile thinking about how blind I would’ve gone from the accumulated hotness. Purple Noon’s a fine little thriller on its own, though, and Delon is mesmerizing.

Slugs (Juan Piquer Simon, 1988) – Trash-tastic bliss. Really horribly bad, but in the best sense of the word. Everything you could want from a movie about killer slugs and more – so much more! The slugs aren’t even super-fast or super-huge – they’re just slightly-larger- than-normal garden-variety slugs. With a taste for human flesh!!! Great, totally ridiculous kills abound, but the greatest thing about this movie? It was shot in my hometown! I’m so very proud to say I come from Slugsville, USA.

For a terrific review of Slugs, check out what Final Girl had to say.
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