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Reviews
Gwok chaan Ling Ling Chat (1994)
Don't bother
I am amazed about the fairly high ratings this rather boring picture got. As far as James Bond spoofs go this one is forgettable. It suffers partly from being a JB parody - JB is in itself a parody - and more from an uneven script which can't decide if the main hero is a kind of Uber James Bond (with knives) OR kind of stumbling wannabee (Get Smart, Austin Powers).
The suits remember more (bad taste) gangsters of the 70s than Secret Agent "dressed to kill"-code.
For better spoofs from Hong Kong try "Magnificent Warriors" (Indy Jones "coveress").
Rating 3.5/10
Boku no kanojo wa saibôgu (2008)
Nerdy romantic fantasy
This is a kind of "blockbuster" romance movie, totally aimed at today's younger audience: so on the positive side this movie isn't bad, the negative: it isn't very good either - or, more correctly, it doesn't surprise.
A kind of nerdy guy without friends (nevertheless good-looking and sympathetic) who lives in Tokyo in a picturesque penthouse who works at a burger-hut and studies physics. So yeah, even if he also has no problem to dance with girls and buy his girlfriend lots of clothing he is lonely.
In comes better-looking girl no. 1 who falls for him immediately. Quite logical, if you don't try to figure out, who was the first girl anyway...
Consequently he falls for her (who wouldn't) but she leaves to the future after an evening of fun.
In comes girl no. 2, which his future self constructed to protect him and some people and needs emotional advice (yeah, right!).
So she does save a kid, a school class and some young football-players. Including a kind of time-travel with lonesome boy to his youth (grandma & cat). After that Tokyo gets destroyed (it's a Japanese flick after all!). Cyborg saves boy but gets destroyed in the process.
Yawn.
Lucky him, girl no. 1 from future no. 2 appears and - after getting mind-blasted with memories of cyborg - they live happily ever after (she seems to be a rich gal, too, how convenient).
Some Terminator scenes and too much kids - I think for the girls out there to much action stuff (how romantic can a cyborg be?), for the boys: to few (and she doesn't undress either).
So, watchable but not very imaginative. The relationship part is very underdeveloped, a love story between an emotionless cyborg and a human could be interesting, or if cyborg can feel emotions is it programmed all the way? And would that be "real"? There is much potential which gets neglected for boring child-saving activities and "fun" scenes.
Technically the movie is OK, but I think there is too much people throwing for a weepy.
Questions: Why does girl no. 1 eat tons of stuff? Why eat cyborg tons of stuff? And the final question: why did cyborg bring cat from childhood to lonely boy witch gets killed immediately in the earthquake?!
Playtime (1967)
Hulot goes to Town...
...and it happened to be post-modern Paris. The third Film of Jaques Tati with his ingenious Monsieur Hulot character takes us to the final place of science and technology, a vast city build completely in glass and steel (and plastic of course). We watch Hulot and a Group of American tourists as they spend a day in this urban surrounding.
This is not a comedy though my DVD says so - it is a kind of 'art'-film, but this is also misleading. Playtime is funny but the real fascination lies in the architecture part - here the pictures are simply stunning. But it wouldn't be Tati, if there weren't lots of details also, alas!, i must see this one in 70mm one day...
I think this film is hard for Tati-beginners, less jokes (but lots of fine humor) and no story whatsoever. "The Vacation of Monsieur Hulot" and "Mon Oncle" are more likable on first view I think (well, if you aren't a Tati lover anyway). So people will like it or hate it, my advice: even if you hate it you have to see it, maybe you will discover that over time this movie catches you! Enough praise, just for discussion, I personally don't think that Tati did made a single movie just for criticism, be it architecture or technology. Sure, he uses these things and exaggerates them to create funny sequences, so a little satire is intentional. But in no way I can see in any of his films criticism. In vacation we see tourists on holiday, satirical and funny to watch. In "Mon Oncle" we do have a modern part (sister & factory) and an old-fashioned France (Hulot) - but these parts do get along very fine, discrepancies occur more through individual preferences (the upper middle-class vs. Hulot as "Outsider") and if there is criticism then about behavior of society with not-normalized people like Hulot - so he is more accepted in the village/old France than by the upper middle-class and social "wannabees". On the other Hand we do not have a direct relation of social elements, a diversion of social classes in upper class (modern) and lower classes (old-fashioned) is unlikely although both parties live in the same city - the outskirts of Paris.
In "Playtime" we have only the city, not even suburbs. This is the set and Tati satirizes it, but as usual we see over the time the individual humans, we even see some real french at the end (well, what the tourist would expect as french of course). More interesting as the pure architecture is the extremely use of the American language. Even the movie-title is American (no wonder the french critics hated this film)! so much for globalization in the 60's. And it doesn't matter if it is Paris or Rome or Berlin (we do not speak about Bonn here), so we have a kind of homogeneous surrounding all over the (western) world but to me it seems simply a fact for Tati, not a discrepancy. City centers are simply not made for living anymore...
And finally I would like to point out, that the reflection of the Eiffel Tower is in my opinion not a hint for the "old lovable city of Pars" as some of my fellow critics implied but the ultimate symbol of modern times and architecture. Remember, the Eiffel Tower started it all...