Eldorado: The Belgian Road Trip movie is an under-appreciated genre. Possibly. I'm not sure, I've never seen one before. And Belgium isn't that big a country, so a road trip movie seems improbable. But here it is.
I get the impression that if David Lynch and Mike Leigh made a movie together (in French) this would be it. The story follows a guy who finds another guy robbing his house, and through an odd set of circumstances they end up road tripping across Belgium together. It was pretty engaging, but I couldn't decide whether it was being weird for weird's sake, or trying to "say something" a lot of the time, and I found that offputting. If the director was trying to say anything, I can't decide what it was. It held my interest, but not enough to really recommend it.
The acting was gangbusters though. You spend most of the movie watching these two guys in a car, and they hold your interest. Cool beans. I gave it a 3/5, though a whole lot of folks walking out were giving it 5 stars. Worth a Netflix.
The acting was gangbusters though. You spend most of the movie watching these two guys in a car, and they hold your interest. Cool beans. I gave it a 3/5, though a whole lot of folks walking out were giving it 5 stars. Worth a Netflix.
Sparrow - This was the prettiest movie I saw at the film festival, which was unexpected given that it's a Chinese movie about a gang of pickpockets. This had a sort of muted John Woo vibe: In the same way Woo turns gun fights into ballet, director Johnnie To makes an almost Bob Fosse-ish jazz dance out of the art of pickpocketing. The plot is entertaining, but almost incidental to the visuals. It's all about seduction and deception and the beauty within each of them.
It also a wonderful dedication to the art of smoking. I'm not a smoker, but I can't think of director other than David Lynch who so fetishizes the art of smoking. Smoke is more than an effect in this movie, it's character. As someone who finds the act of smoking fairly nasty, I was surprised at how engaging it came across in this movie.
The finale, a pickpocketing orgy in the rain beneath umbrellas in slow motion featuring dozens of thugs, was one of the most beautiful crime sequences I've ever seen. Loads of fun. In the end, I gave this one a 4/5. The plot didn't quite support the imagery, but I had a blast. I've already added a half dozen other films by Johnnie To to my Netflix queue.
Ghajini - Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the highest grossing Bollywood movie of all time, a 3-hour long reinterpretation of Memento with the requisite Bollywood pop numbers sprinkled throughout. (And a 90 minute love story kinda wedged in the middle.) It was an absolute blast.
I've seen a handful of Bollywood films before, but never in a packed theater. Great experience. The differences in the sensibilities of American and Indian audiences are a little more muted here than in others I've seen, limited mostly to fashion decisions that strike us as laughable and the rather abrupt transitions into song. But the epic nature of the flick led to a lot of amusing melodrama, the kind of stuff that fell out of vogue in the US in the 1950s or so. The female love interest isn't just good, she's "I just saved a trainful of orphans from getting sold into slavery" good. The bad guy isn't just bad, he's "I'm going to kill everyone who's ever opposed me, just in case" bad. And he has a comic bellowing laugh. Etc. But there's still enough grey area to keep everything interesting.
There's no question the movie was a bit cheesy, though that's more of an indictment of the genre than the movie itself. Ghajini was an exhilarating, entertaining experience, probably the most fun I had at any movie in the festival. I gave it a 5/5, and may be interested in catching it again on video.
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