The Good The Bad The Weird (2008, Korea)

The first I heard about this film was that it won a best cinematography award in some Asian film festival, and that the cinematographer was a newcomer who admitted he didn't know what he was doing, which gave him freedom to do anything. I thought that was an awesome approach, or at least a great way to describe it.

The film should have also won best sound design.

As for the film itself, you're taking a big risk when you make a film with a title that references one of the greatest films of all time (I think "The Good, The Bad & the Ugly" is my number 2). You're walking a fine line between making a successful homage, and stepping into a big pile of shit. I think this film hits the former on the mark. It's not derivative at all, it's its own film, with the homage in the 3 archtypes (although it also directly rips off the hat duel from "A Few Dollars More" (part of the "The Good, The Bad & the Ugly" 'trilogy'), but in a way that it's clearly homage. There's no question of where the scene came from).

This Korean film, set in Manchuria in the late 30's (or 1941 if you do that math), is a slick, stylized, madcap romp of an action film. It's fun, exciting, and like I said has a killer soundtrack and amazing sound design, which for me stood out more than the excellent cinematography. It's not a flawless film, but you don't watch a film like this for perfect plot points.

It's outrageous and cool, and a lot of fun. All three main characters are likeable or have a "cool" aspect to their persona. There is an unexpected twist late in the film which was a nice touch, differentiating it from the homage, where the archtypes have been clearly laid out. And it must have been nice for the Koreans to treat the Japanese army the way that they did in the film. A small expression of "getting back at them".

9 out of 10 tomatoes for the cool, fun factor.



My So-Called Love (2008, Taiwan)

I guess I should have known better. I don't like romances, the previous romance I saw was horrible until I found out there was a twist, and that, in the end, didn't help redeem it much, it just made it watchable.

I had higher hopes for this film after reading someone else's (who I don't know at all) blog review. It sounded like it was more sophisticated and concept-driven. But to me it was a glorified pretentious chick-flick, attempting to land an "indie" feel.

The first huge fault I have with this film is the style. Many scenes are choppy and cut up like an MTV video. Very few visuals are allowed to develop, it's cut, cut, cut. Maybe the director felt this style was saying something about love, but to me it said something about the film – nothing develops.

The characters aren't developed, the situations aren't developed, the narrative doesn't develop, no ideas develop. We're just supposed to believe that this woman's experience with three men is supposed to shed some light on the nature of love. It doesn't.

This is where my review falls apart, because there were just so many faults about this film, I don't know where to begin – it totally falls flat from my point of view. I struggle to find anything redeeming aside from the eye-candy of lead actress Barbie Hsu, who I recently saw in a horror movie on TV called "Silk", and I think she's a very capable actress.

If I had to choose a second big flaw, I guess I'd choose implausibility. Do real people talk like this? Do real people act like this? Do situations like this really happen? These aren't rhetorical questions – no, they don't! (or do they?)

The funny thing is the trailer says it's based on real events, but they must be real events of the writer's love life, which I'm led to believe was unexceptional. If you make a love-themed film based on real life, it better have an exceptional story.

Do you want to watch a film about my love life? Believe me, you don't. And I don't want to watch a film about your love life, unless there was some exceptional, universal theme you experienced that everyone else can relate to or wish for. I don't want to watch all the cutesy annoying anecdotes that you thought were the world while they were happening.

There's no flow to how the story unfolds. Wait, no story, no plot, just a timeline. Apparently 10 years, but it was a total surprise to me when I found 10 years had passed. Seemed like a several months to me.

Dialogue is random, scenes are random. Watching this film, admittedly already biased against it, I kept wondering "where did that come from?" Along with all the quick cuts, I wondered if the director wasn't trying to be impressionistic like a Seurat painting. Each little bit of information on the screen is distinct, but the mind puts it all together into a seamless narrative. Or not.

Actually, there is one scene where a character reacts to a situation in much the same way I wanted to react to the movie. She finds herself in one (random) situation that she finds so incredible and ridiculous, and no doubt she's hurt by it, that she takes off laughing hysterically, and laughing, and laughing.

Rotten. 3 out of 10 tomatoes, and the 3 is for a decent soundtrack that appealed to my fringe tastes, and the eye-candy of Barbie Hsu. Ironically, the film may have fared better if they didn't cast such a beauty in the role. It would have been more credible. Well, not credible, but at least less distracting. Maybe more depth.

I usually watch DVD rentals twice, sometimes I get something more out of a second viewing. I couldn't watch this a second time. I ran it, but it just annoyed the hell out of me, and didn't pay much attention to it. Whenever I paid attention, it just reminded me how annoying it was. I recommend this film for anyone who wants to know what I consider a bad film, although from the blog review I read, it might also appeal to chicks who like anything vaguely "romantic".