As much as Larry Gopnik struggles to be a mensch (a serious man, guided by right principles) he’s constantly fed with temptations and mysterious bad events.  He tries his best to keep the family together and live straight, but there’s no end to his tribulations.

Larry is a professor of physics waiting to get promoted to tenured position but the school is getting anonymous letters slandering about him.  One of his students doesn’t know basic math and tries to bribe him for a C.  Instead of studying for the upcoming bar mitzvah, his son stole money to buy marijuana and is caught listening to the Jefferson Airplane during the Yiddish lesson. His daughter only cares about hairdo and also steals money to get a nose job. His brother is a parasite gambler who sleeps on the family sofa and spends most of his time in the toilet writing numbers on a book. His wife just announced – out of the blue – that she wants a divorce because she is now in a relation with a friend of them, the slimy Sy, considered a serious man by the local Jewish community.  The guy living next door tries to steal part of the lawn moving the border.  The attractive lady next door offers him marijuana and opportunity for easy sex.

In growing desperation, tormented by horrific nightmares, Larry seeks help from 3 lawyers and 3 rabbis, but none of them actually can or want to do anything useful.  They basically don’t care or – worse – they tell him non-sense stories about messages coming from God.  At the end of the movie, almost bankrupt, Larry eventually gives up and grants a C to the briber.  Soon after that he gets a call from the doctor: they need to talk immediately about something probably bad, perhaps a cancer?  And that is nothing, because all of a sudden a tornado is going to hit the school in a few minutes, destroying everything, including the American flag.

Unlike previous movies, this time the Cohen brothers decided to talk about their own culture, their heritage, the place in the mid-west where they grew up.  And the Jewish culture in this movie is uneasy, or should I say frightening?  Nobody will help you understand the will and the wrath of HaShem (=God), not even the Kabbalah, and the more you keep straight the more you will receive tribulations that you’ll have to swallow. There is no escape.  If you get on the rooftop you feel safe for a moment and perhaps you believe you eventually found some insight of what is going on around you, but that’s just one more challenge that’s coming.  There are smiles and laughs here and there but most of the movie you feel uneasy about what happens to Larry.

I’m certainly no expert in the Jewish matters as I ignore most of their culture and traditions, but the impression I get from this movie is about a crisis in their religion, struggling to keep up with modern times.  In ancient Poland living straight was so simple, even when you had to confront with dybbuks (=evil ghosts) you immediately knew how to deal with them.  Nowadays staying in touch with HaShem is increasingly difficult.

On the other hand, the resignation that guides Larry as he tries to take on his shoulder and accept all the bad things happening around him, as if they were something sent by God to atone the original sin, reminds me the lack of reaction in the Jewish people while nazis were progressively segregating them, taking possession of their property (just like the guy next door does with the lawn), up to the concentration camps.

Special mention to the first rabbi, interpreted by Simon Helberg, who is Wolowitz in The Big Bang Theory.

A serious man
USA 2009, by Ethan and Joel Cohen, Drama
IMDB 1019452

I recently watched this movie. The plot is about an ex secret agent from Mossad now secretly controlled by the US government to perform illegal actions in defense of the “American lifestyle” and declaring he is OK to kill a few innocents when that is for the good of everybody else.  This bad guy goes crazy for money and escapes control, killing his angel in the Senate and creating an incident with many victims.  The movie hit the theaters in the US on Jun 2001, three months before the twin towers, but of course that’s a mere coincidence, isn’t it?  And oh, one of the bad guys in the movie – the one who dies first – is called Torvalds, is Finnish and is an hacker sought-after by the FBI for the many international computer-related crimes he commited.  Any resemblance to real events and/or to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The computer-related stuff in this movie is rendered very badly and no amount of geek slang used in the script can make it better.  On the other hand Halle Berry is astounding – she is the one who makes the movie worthwhile.

Swordfish
USA 2001, by Dominic Sena, Thriller
IMDB 244244

So once again I’m attending the Far East Film Festival in Udine. This year they run 8 movies a day and there’s practically no pause to eat. If you want to miss nothing you need a catheter Yesterday I got two autographs from NAKATA Hideo (director of Death Note movies) and YAMAZAKI Takashi (director of Always Sunset On Third Street). Stay tuned.

A former ping-pong player spent his life as a loser after failing the world championship at the final match and having his army-veteran father killed by the triads. But now, CIA recruited him to go hunt the triad’s boss, who is passionate about ping-pong, and he is determinate to get back his and his father’s honor.

To help him, CIA will have him attend lessons on a Chinese kung-fu style school, where he gets to know the true art of ping-pong, as well as a fascinating she-teacher.

This is a crazy movie and it helped me a lot on a boring 9-hour flight between the US and Italy. Not a masterpiece as Shaolin Soccer, but truly fun. And by the way, the Italian dubbing is even more fun.

I see there are lots of negative critics of this movie, they say it’s not worth an 8 euro ticket, but you know what? On a long distance flight I find this much more enjoyable than serious movies.

Balls of fury
USA 2007, by Robert Ben Garant, Comedy
IMDB 424823

There is only one survivor: Doctor Levine (Will Smith), who is mysteriously immune to the virus and therefore convinced to have in his blood the seed for a vaccine. For three years he kept on researching a cure, hiding at night in hist apartment in Washington Square and trying to live a “normal” life in daylight. He’s alone tough, alone and saddened by the lost of his wife and daughter. His dog Samantha is the only companion in his endeavor.

I was in Manhattan when I watched this movie. First thing I was impressed by how realistically they rendered the city in a deserted condition. I could recognize several places and on wondered how they could remove all the crowds who usually walk there, how they could grow grass in the asphalt of the avenues and sand on top of the cars, how they could make it so still. Further, it’s hard doing a movie with basically only one actor and almost no conversation. Will Smith here did a very good job. We can clearly see what he thinks, even when he’s silent. Third, the plot (from a sci-fi book wrote in 1954) is fascinating. It’s not just action and special effects: there’s also convincing drama and the “a-ha” effect on seed how it would be like.

I read at the last minute they decided for a totally different ending because the original one was bad. Unfortunately, the one they used as a replacement is equally disappointing to me.

I am legend
USA 2007, by Francis Lawrence, Drama/Sci-fi/Horror
IMDB 480249

1495, Japan is collapsing under US attacks. Their navy has been defeated at the Mariana Islands and now the last line of defense before invasion of the main land line is Iwo Jima, a black volcanic isle in the middle of nowhere. 20000 men are there preparing for the battle. They know they are in huge disadvantage and they’re going to die under US sheer power, but no matter what, they will fight to delay invasion as much as they can. To improve their resistance, they hide in tunnels they caved under Mount Suribachi, desperately trying to find a meaning in all of that, most of them taking off their lives hugging bomb, under cultural pressure.

In this movie Clint Eastwood removed all of the colors. Images are so bare they’re almost black and white, like old pictures found in a forgotten box. But in war there’s no such thing as simple black and white. War is a mix of grays and enemies can be good as much as comrades can be bad. In war both parties feel as if they were standing up against evil, and of course the most perceived evilness is when the strongest party is trying to crush the one that’s losing the battle. And in war the other party is faceless, but as soon as we have opportunity to establish communication we find they have emotions too, and moms, just like we do!
All the movie soundtrack is in Japanese. In Italy we dub every movie, but this one wasn’t and I’m glad they left it alone. The sound of Japanese orders is well worth the trouble to read subtitles. I discovered this movie is the companion of Flags of Our Fathers which is the same story as seen from the American point of view, but unfortunately I missed it. I think the idea to make two war movies from the opposite points of view is great. This is the one true way to show war as it is. Anyhow, having watched just this one I can say it stands on its own and even alone it is a masterpiece.

Letters from Iwo Jima
USA 2006, by Clint Eastwood, War Drama
IMDB 498380

Last night I wanted to go to the movies, even if unfortunately in August you take what is available. The only open-air theater in town ran Borat. I knew I wasn’t going to like it, but I thought I had to see in order to better criticize…

The plot of this movie is very simple. Borat is a Kazakh reporter. He lives in a poor village where ignorance, racism, sexism, prostitution and lack of hygiene are the standard. He is hired by local goverment to fly to the US and make a documentary about American customs and culture. There, he does lots of mistakes due to his cultural difference, creating embarrassing situations.

How this movie managed to get an Oscar nomination is beyond me. The way it denigrates Kazakhstan, expecially in the first 20 minutes, is outrageous. It does heavy use of stereotypes about poverty, ignorance, sex promiscuity, sexism, religion, attitude toward mental handicaps and everything else. It depicts Kazakh people as if they lived like animals and hated Jews and Christians. What tries to be humorous, ends up being sad.

In the second half the movie tries to criticize American culture by building an implicit parallel, showing neo-nazis, creationists, people with prejudices against homosexuals and prostitutes, sexist students, war supporters and so on. Unfortunately, the critique against US hypocrisy is way weaker than what was shown for Kazakhstan.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
USA, 2006, by Larry Charles, Comedy
IMDB 443453

Matsuko just died. Her nephew is given the task to clean up her filthy house, even if he actually never met her. He didn’t even know he had an aunt, so out of curiosity he begins to reconstruct aunt Matsuko’s story by asking people she knew and trying to find out whether she had any value.

The movie unfolds as a big flashback, starting from young Matsuko as a daughter that loved musicals. Her sister was ill, so her father was always sad and always gave the most attention to the sister. While growing, she hit every possible disgrace. Working as a teacher of music, got fired after taking responsibility for a theft done by one of her students. Rejected by the family, she went throuh a sequence of bad boyfriends always leaving her deluded.

As the movie goes on, we see Matsuko descending in hell, jail included, but meanwhile she smiles so much and her eyes are so bright she radiates happiness all the time. She can’t give up being positive, giving true and absolute love to her boyfriends, helping people, trying hard to be good, looking for a prince.

After this introduction, you’re probably thinking this is the usual melodrama, but Director Nakashima Tetsuya’s experience in TV spots makes a huge difference. This movie is so colored (over saturated), so fast, so dense of rithm changes and surreal gags that you can hardly define it. Every rule of the genre was completely demolished and contaminated with comedy, musical and fairy tale fantasy. There’s even computer graphic to help the most surreal sequences. And oh believe me, the result is stunning and moving. I could barely hold back my tears.

In my opinion this is the best movie I watched at FEFF9 and surely deserves an international audience.

Memories of Matsuko (Kiraware Matsuko no isshô),
Japan 2006, by Tetsuya Nakashima, Drama/Comedy
IMDB 768120

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video was shown in the theater before each movie.

In four days I’ve watched 19 movies:

• After this our exile ***
  by Patrick Tam, Hong Kong, a sad child story, where the child grows good despite his parents being completely inept.
• Agent X44 *****
  by Joyce Bernal, Philippines, a funny remake of the spy movie from the seventies
• Cruel winter blues **** 1/2
  by Lee Jung-bum, South Korea, even gangsters have hearts
• Death note **** 1/2
  by Kaneko Shusuke, Japan, manga story about a brilliant boy killing criminals just by writing their names on a book
• Death note: The last name **** 1/2
  by Kaneko Shusuke, Japan, sequel of the previous one
• A dirty carnival ****
  by Yoo Ha, South Korea, a realistic movie about gansters in the real gangster spirit
• Dog bite dog **
  by Soi Cheang, Hong Kong, a crude and bloody crime thriller
• Eternal summer **
  by Leste Chen, Taiwan, triangle love/friendship story among 2 girls and a boy.
• Eye in the sky **** 1/2
  by Yau Nai Hoi, Hong Kong, thriller where Surveillance Unit defeats a gang just by seeing everything.
• Family ties ****
  by Kim Tae-yong, South Korea, three episodes about difficult relationship between brothers, mother and daughter, lovers.
• The Host **** 1/2
  by Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, a monster brings terror in Seoul but a family will be united to fight it despite the government errors.
• The Matrimony *** 1/2
  by Teng Huatao, China, ghost movie where a girl died in a car accident tries to take over the wife of her ex-boyfriend.
• Memories of Matsuko *****
  by Nakashima Tetsuya, Japan, love makes life worthwhile even when you get only delusions. A truly colored comedy.
• The restless ** 1/2
  by Cho Dong-oh, South Korea, lots of computer graphics in this fantasy movie
• Sakuran **
  by Ninagawa Mika, Japan, a geisha life story in the Edo-era, with a modern soundtrack.
• Umizary 2: test of trust *
  by Hasumi Eiichiro, Japan, a disaster where Coast Guard divers save people from a boat sinking whit a romantic love story mixed in
• Uncle’s paradise ** 1/2
  by Imaoka Shinji, Japan, pink movie with dream-reality dualism and infernal twists.
• Young and clueless **
  by Tang Danian, China, love/friendship stories among teen girls and a boys, and evolution when they grow up.
• Nomad ***
  by Patrick Tam, Hong Kong, a disenchanted portrait of youngness bore in the eighties, with a violent ending.