Change Your Image
aljones15
Reviews
Yurîka (2000)
hard times and little hope make a drama all the more memorable
There are many bleak films these days, but Sinji Aoyama's maps out a hard time that perhaps is idiomatic of the way we all end up treated sometimes. Makoto a bus driver is involved in a bus hijacking along with 2 children. To cut to the chase the victim becomes the accused and despite myriad intentions to the contrary is treated pretty badly by society as a whole. If anything Eureka maps out the impetus of what forces many into the bases of traumas and the beginnings of lives on the margins. It maintains a slight from of hope in the film through only by making the bleak a cutting point for morality. A test Makoto passes more so than others. The point being the best don't always win, but at least they hold their passions through and through. Taiwanese DVD is dual-language and international code so will play anywhere. Music by Albert Ayler, Jim O'Rourke, and the director make the cut.
Dong (1998)
amazing
In the middle of The Hole I e-mailed a friend of mine to summarize it. Not sure if the film would break down into a series of submissive gestures, I felt a little un-easy recommending it, but then I saw the ending. It's perfect. I've been living in Korea for 6 months, and this film could just as easily summarize the strange ennui and frustration of any Asian metropolis as it takes on Taiwin here. It uses the myth of Hong Kong musicals the same way Godard or Hartley use Western musicals, but takes it to an extreme, it's gritty world and occasionally Kafka-esquire logic make it all the better. I really feel like The Hole's closest comparison is Hal Hartley's Surviving Desire, but have a kinda bleak edge to what are ultimately hopefully and strangely metaphorical films. Anyway, this is what I wrote to Esther. Hope you like The Hole too.
Hey,
watching a move called the hole. Taiwanese I think seems a bit to weird for china unless it's hong Kong. it's worth seeing so far. it's about a guy and a girl in an apartment complex. the guy's ceiling caves in and the girl starts to get annoyed and well it's kinda a weird metaphor for the simultaneous pleasure ,degregation, and pain of a rather intense crush. there's also a kinda zombie-virus-sub-plot too and a lot of weird little scenes where the girl acts out her desires through rather innocent and kinda fun 50's doo-wop sequences. worth a look.