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Hana-bi (1997)
Explosions in the sky
This is a perfectly judged movie. The peerless Takeshi Kitano moves almost wordlessly through this film conveying moments of genuine tenderness alongside vengeful violence. The mastery with which he alternates between the tender and the brutal without ever losing the pathos of his character Nishi's situation is stunning. As ever Kitano reaches for the simplistic as opposed to the bombastic - admirable for a movie peopled with comic book violent yakuza and characters shattered by the unfairness of life's mandatory dealing of the cards. Telling the story in violent flashback, Kitano balances his tale with a beautiful understated romanticism laced with comic tenderness. This is the film the deft editor, visionary director, multifaceted actor and comic genius was born to make.
La caduta degli dei (Götterdämmerung) (1969)
Adornment
Visconti's epic allegory of a wealthy murdered German patriarch, his family and their uneasy relationship with the Third Reich is wonderfully well-intentioned, magnificently overblown and almost a masterpiece. Where Kurasawa adapts Shakespearean themes and transposes their themes as far-reaching and relevant to different worlds, Visconti takes elements of Macbeth and Hamlet bludgeoning them into his tale of a dynasty seemingly aware of drastically uncertain times and powerless to do anything but react in outlandishly vicious and self-protective defence. The storyline embracing full-blown homosexual orgy, incest, transvestism, and paedophelia as portrayal of Nazi depravity is never subtle but always magnetic. A piece so verbose is of course massively flawed. The dialogue, although delivered in English is at times illegible and the discrepancy between actors enjoying themselves (a resurgent Ingrid Thulin, an ecstatically hammy Dietrich-impersonating Helmut Berger) and actors sweating and morose in their discomfort (a visibly hard-working Dirk Bogarte) is noticeable. Visconti's zoom lenght shots to portray (very obvious) evil have long been rendered obsolete by television and simply add to the general sense of chaos.In truth however it remarkably adds to the joyous uncertainty of events and as the movie sinks almost overwhelmed to its conclusion, it ultimately survives for its hypnotic splendour.
Bad Timing (1980)
A Viennese whirl
'Bad Timing's jagged format, beautiful Viennese setting and Keith Jarrett-led, opulent score create a movie thats as mysterious as it is menacing. A plot comes, is alluded to, told intermittently in flashbacks and arcs and splutters to conclusion but its very much a film of photography and technique. Roeg's structureless style overwhelms a perhaps miscast Harvey Keitel, a struggling (as always) Art Garfunkel (the one pop-star casting Roeg didn't get spot on) and a ravishing Theresa Russell but ultimately wins out as the film lingers long and tantalizingly out of reach long after viewing. The fifth of five in Roeg's golden period and in many ways the most intriguing.